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EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 
BRIEFER COURSE 



EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 

BRIEFER COURSE 



BY 
EDWARD L. THORNDIKE 

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY IN TEACHERS COLLEGE 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



PUBLISHED BY 

ULeatljet* College, Columbia ftnibewitp 

NEW YORK 

1922 



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Copyright 1914, By 
EDWARD L. THORNDIKE 



THE MASON PRINTING CORPORATION 
SYRACUSE AND NEW YORK 



PREFACE 

Our knowledge of human instincts and capacities, of the 
processes of learning and remembering, of mental work 
and fatigue, and of individual differences and their causes has 
been much increased in the past score of years. This knowledge 
I have organized for advanced students in separate volumes on 
The Original Nature of Man, The Psychology of Learning, 
Work and Fatigue and Individual Differences. This Briefer 
Course represents a simpler treatment of the more fundamental 
subject matter of these volumes, organized as a text-book in 
Educational Psychology for students in colleges and normal 
schools. 

Its scope is sufficiently indicated by the table of contents. 
Its method is that of straightforward and systematic presentation 
of principles. The wise teacher will introduce students to these 
principles through problems made real and intelligible by the 
students' own experiences and will assist students to verify them 
by observation and experiment and to apply them to appropriate 
matters of educational theory and practice. 

Certain topics are included which are a little beyond the 
interests and capacities of the lowest third of college students, 
notably the anatomy and physiology of original tendencies, the 
causes of changes in the rate of improvement, the effect of 
equal amounts of practice upon individual differences, and the 
quantitative treatment of learning, fatigue and individual differ- 
ences. These facts and principles, however, if mastered, will 
simplify and economize thought about important educational 
problems, and I make no apology for including them. If 
education is to be a serious profession, preparation for it should 
not avoid matters which require study and are beyond the 
interests of dull minds. 

Teachers College, 
April, 1914 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

The Original Nature of Man 

Chapter Pagh 

I. General Characteristics of Original Ten- 
dencies i 

Original versus Learned Tendencies 
The Problems of Original Nature 
Names for Original Tendencies 
The Components of an Original Tendency 
The Action of Original Tendencies 

II. Man's Equipment of Instincts and Capa- 
cities ii 

Sensory Capacities 
Original Attentiveness 
*~~ Gross Bodily Control 

Food-getting, Protective Responses and Anger 

III. Man's Equipment of Instincts and Capa- 

cities : Responses to the Behavior of other 
Human Beings 27 

Motherly Behavior 

Responses to the Presence, Approval and 

Scorn of Men 
Mastering and Submissive Behavior 
Other Social Instincts 
Imitation 

General Imitativeness 
The Imitation of Particular Forms of Behavior 

IV. Original Satisfiers and Annoyers 50 

The Original Nature of Wants, Interests and 
Motives 

vu 



I CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

■^ The Principle of Readiness 

The Explanation of 'Multiple Response' or 
'Varied Reaction' 

V. Tendencies to Minor Bodily Movements and 

Cerebral Connections 59 

Vocalization, Visual Exploration and Manipula- 
tion 
Other Possible Specializations 
Play 

VI. The Capacity to Learn 69 

•^•'•The Laws of Learning 
Limitations to Modifiability 
The Supposed Formation of Connections by 

'Faculties' 
The Supposed Formation of Connections by 

the Perception of Their Action in Another 
The Supposed Formation of Connections by 

the Power of an" Idea to Produce the Act 

which It Represents 

VII. t he Anatomy and Physiology of Original 

Tendencies 84 

The Structure of the Neurones 
The Arrangement of the Neurones 
Sensitivity and Conductivity 
The Physiology of the Capacity to Learn and 
of Readiness 

VIII. Order and Dates of Appearance and Disap- 
pearance of Original Tendencies 100 

The Recapitulation Theory 
The Utility Theory 

The Gradual Waxing of Delayed Instincts 
and Capacities 



CONTENTS IX 

Chapteb Page 

The Probable Frequency of Transitoriness in 
Original Tendencies 

IX. The Value and Use of Original Tendencies 116 
The Doctrine of Nature's Infallibility 
Defects in Man's Original Nature 



PART II 

The Psychology of Learning 

X. The Laws of Learning in Animals. .......... 125 

Samples of Animal Learning 
Characteristics of Animal Learning 

XI. Associative Learning in Man 138 

Varieties of Learning 
The Laws of Habit 

XII. Learning by Analysis and Selection 153 

Analysis and Selection in General 
The Subtler Forms of Analysis 
The Higher Forms of Selection 

XIII. Mental Functions 173 

The Organization of Connections 

Characteristics of Mental Functions 

The Concepts of Efficiency and Improvement 

XIV. The Amount, Rate and Limit of Improvement 186 

Practice Curves 

The Frequency and Rapidity of Improvement 

under Experimental Conditions 
Differences amongst Individuals in the Rate 

of Improvement in the Same Function 
The Limit of Improvement 



CONTENTS 
Chapter Page 

XV. The Factors and Conditions of Improvement 202 
The Elements in Improvement 
External Conditions of Improvement 
Psychological Conditions of Improvement 
Educational Conditions of Improvement 



XVI. Changes in Rate of Improvement 225 

Illustrative Cases 

The Causes Determining Changes in the Rate 
of Improvement 



XVII. The Permanence of Improvement, 
Deterioration by Disuse 
Results of Experimental Studies 
General Conclusions 



243 



XVIII. The Influence of Improvement in One Men- 
tal Function upon the Efficiency of 

Other Functions 259 

Facilitation and Inhibition 

Changes in Expectation of Mental Discipline 

The General Rationale of Mental Discipline 



XIX. Mental Fatigue 283 

The Decrease in Efficiency of a Single Func- 
tion under Continuous Exercise 
The Curve of Work 
The Curve of Satisfyingness 

XX. Mental Fatigue (continued) 305 

The Influence of Continuous Mental Work, 
Special or General, upon General Ability 
Exnerimental Results 

General Theories of Mental Work and Fatigue 
The Hygiene of Mental Work 



CONTENTS XI 

Chapter Page 

PART III 

Individual Differences and Their Causes 

XXI. Introduction 331 

The Problems of Individual Differences 

XXII. The Causes of Individual Differences: Sex 

and Race 340 

Sex Differences in Ability 

Sex Differences in Traits Not Measured 

Objectively 
A Sample Study of Racial Differences 

XXIII. The Influence of Immediate Ancestry or 

Family 354 

The Variability of Individuals of the Same 

Sex and Ancestry 
Measurements of Resemblances in Related 

Individuals 

XXIV. The Influence of Maturity 369 

XXV. The Influence of the Environment 376 

Difficulties in Estimating the Amount of Influ- 
ence of the Environment 

Measurements of the Influence of the Environ- 
ment 

The Method of Action of Differences in Envi- 
ronment 

The Relative Importance of Original Nature 
and Environment 

XXVI. The Nature and Amount of Individual Dif- 
ferences in Single Traits 402 

The Continuity of Mental Variations 
The Relative Frequency of Different Amounts 
of Difference 



X1J CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

XXVIL The Nature and Amount of Individual Dif- 
ferences in Combinations of Traits: Types 

of Intellect and Character 411 

A Sample Problem : Individual Differences in 

Imagery 
The Theory of Multiple Types and the Single- 
Type Theory 
Individual Differences in the Average Amount 
of a Combination of Traits 

Bibliography of References Made in the Text 423 

Index , . , , , . . .. 431 



Educational Psychology 

Briefer Course 
PART I 

The Original Nature of Man 

chapter i 

General Characteristics of Original Tendencies 

The arts and sciences serve human welfare by helping 
man to change the world, including man himself, for the better. 
The word education refers especially to those elements of sci- 
ence and art which are concerned with changes in man himself. 
Wisdom and economy in improving man's wants and in making 
him better able to satisfy them depend upon knowledge — first. 
of what his nature is, apart from education, and second, of 
the laws which govern changes in it. It is the province of 
educational psychology to give such knowledge of the original 
nature of man and of the laws of modifiability or learning, in 
the case of intellect, character and skill. 

A man's nature and the changes that take place in it may 
be described in terms of the responses — of thought, feeling, 
action and attitude — which he makes, and of the bonds by 
which these are connected with the situations which life offers. 
Any fact of intellect, character or skill means a tendency to 
respond in a certain way to a certain situation — involves a 
situation or state of affairs influencing the man, a response or 
state of affairs in the man, and a connection or bond whereby 
the latter is the result of the former. 



2 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

ORIGINAL VerSHS LEARNED TENDENCIES 

Any man possesses at the very start of his life — that is, at 
the moment when the ovum and spermatozoon which are to 
produce him have united — numerous well-defined tendencies 
to future behavior.* Between the situations which he will 
meet and the responses which he will make to them, pre-formed 
bonds exist. It is already determined by the constitution of 
these two germs, that under certain circumstances he will see 
and hear and feel and act in certain ways. His intellect and 
morals, as well as his bodily organs and movements, are in part 
the consequence of the nature of the embryo in the first moment 
of its life. What a man is and does throughout life is a result 
of whatever constitution he has at the start and of all the forces 
that act upon it before and after birth. I shall use the term 
'original nature' for the former and 'environment' for the 
latter. 

THE PROBLEMS OF ORIGINAL NATURE 

Elementary psychology acquaints us with the fact that men 
are, apart from education, equipped with tendencies to feel and 
act in certain ways in certain circumstances — that the response 
to be made to a situation may be determined by man's inborn 
organization. It is, in fact, a general law that, other things 
being equal, the response to any situation will be that which 

* Since the term, behavior, has acquired certain technical meanings in its 
use by psychologists, and since it will be frequently used in this book, the 
meaning which will be attached to it here should perhaps be stated. I use 
it to refer to those activities of thought, feeling, and conduct in the broadest 
sense which an animal — here, man — exhibits, which are omitted from dis- 
cussion by the physics, chemistry and ordinary physiology of today, and 
which are referred by popular usage to intellect, character, skill and tem- 
perament. Behavior, then, is not contrasted with, but inclusive of, conscious 
life. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 3 

is by original nature connected with that situation, or with 
some situation like it. Any neurone will, when stimulated, 
transmit the stimulus, other things being equal, to the neurone 
with which it is by inborn organization most closely connected. 
The basis of intellect and character is this fund of unlearned 
tendencies, this original arrangement of the neurones in the 
brain. 

The original connections may develop at various dates and 
may exist for only limited times; their waxing and waning 
may be sudden or gradual. They are the starting point for 
all education or other human control. The aim of education 
is to perpetuate some of them, to eliminate some, and to modify 
or redirect others. They are perpetuated by providing the 
stimuli adequate to arouse them and give them exercise, and 
by associating satisfaction with their action. They are elim- 
inated by withholding these stimuli so that they abort through 
disuse, or by associating discomfort with their action. They 
are redirected by substituting, in the situation-connection-rc- 
sponse series, another response instead of the undesirable 
original one; or by attaching the response to another situation 
in connection with which it works less or no harm, or even 
positive good. 

It is a first principle of education to utilize any individual's 
original nature as a means to changing him for the better — 
to produce in him the information, habits, powers, interests 
and ideals which are desirable. 

The behavior of man in the family, in business, in the 
state, in religion and in every other affair of life is rooted in 
his unlearned, original equipment of instincts and capacities. 
All schemes of improving human life must take account of 
man's original nature, most of all when their aim is to reverse 
or counteract it. 



4 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

NAMES FOR ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 

Three terms, reflexes, instincts, and inborn capacities, di- 
vide the work of naming these unlearned tendencies. When 
the tendency concerns a very definite and uniform response to 
a very simple sensory situation, and when the connection be- 
tween the situation and the response is very hard to modify 
and is also very strong so that it is almost inevitable, the con- 
nection or response to which it leads is called a reflex. Thus 
the knee-jerk is a very definite and uniform response to the 
simple sense-stimulus of sudden hard pressure against a cer- 
tain spot. It is hard to lessen, to increase, or otherwise control 
the movement, and, given the situation, the response almost 
always comes. When the response is more indefinite, the 
situation more complex, and the connection more modifiable, 
instinct becomes the customary term. Thus one's misery at 
being scorned is too indefinite a response to too complex a sit- 
uation and is too easily modifiable to be called a reflex. When 
the tendency is to an extremely indefinite response or set of re- 
sponses to a very complex situation, and when the connection's 
final degree of strength is commonly due to very large con- 
tributions from training, it has seemed more appropriate to 
replace reflex and instinct by some term like capacity, or ten- 
dency, or potentiality. Thus an original tendency to respond 
to the circumstances of school education by achievement in 
learning the arts and sciences is called the capacity for scholar- 
ship. 

There is, of course, no gap between reflexes and instincts, 
or between instincts and the still less easily describable original 
tendencies. The fact is that original tendencies range with re- 
spect to the nature of the responses from such as are single, 
simple, definite, uniform within the individual and only slightly 
variable amongst individuals, to responses that are highly com- 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 5 

pound, complex, vague, and variable within one individual's 
life and amongst individuals. They range with respect to the 
nature of the situation from simple facts like temperature, oxy- 
gen or humidity, to very complex facts like 'meeting suddenly 
and unexpectedly a large animal when in the dark without 
human companions,' and include extra-bodily, bodily, and what 
would be commonly called purely mental, situations. They 
range with respect to the bond or connection from slight modifi- 
ability to great modifiability, and from very close likeness 
amongst individuals to fairly wide variability. 

Much labor has been spent in trying to make hard and fast 
distinctions between reflexes and instincts and between instincts 
and these vaguer predispositions which are here called capac- 
ities. It is more useful and more scientific to avoid such dis- 
tinctions in thought, since in fact there is a continuous grada- 
tion. 

THE COMPONENTS OF AN ORIGINAL TENDENCY 

A typical reflex, or instinct, or capacity, as a whole, includes 
the ability to be sensitive to a certain situation, the ability to 
make a certain response, and the existence of a bond or con- 
nection whereby that response is made to that situation. For 
instance, the young chick is sensitive to the absence of other 
members of his species, is able to peep, and is so organized that 
the absence of other members of the species makes him peep. 
But the tendency to be sensitive to a certain situation may exist 
without the existence of a connection therewith of any further 
exclusive response, and the tendency to make a certain response 
may exist without the existence of a connection limiting that 
response exclusively to any single situation. The three-year- 
old child is by inborn nature markedly sensitive to the presence 
and acts of other human beings, but the exact nature of his 



D THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

response varies. The original tendency to cry is very strong, 
but there is no one situation to which it is exclusively bound. 

Original nature seems to decide that the individual will 
respond somehow to certain situations more often than it 
decides just what he will do, and to decide that he will make 
certain responses more often than it decides just when he will 
make them. So, for convenience in thinking about man's un- 
learned equipment, this appearance of multiple response to one 
same situation and multiple causation of one same response 
may be taken roughly as the fact. 

It must not, however, be taken to mean that the result of an 
action set up in the sensory neurones by a situation is essen- 
tially unpredictable — that, for instance, exactly the same neur- 
one-action (paralleling, let us say, the sight of a dog by a 
certain two-year-old child) may lead, in the two-year-old, now 
to the act of crying, at another time to shy retreat, at another 
to effusive joy, and at still another to curious examination of 
the newcomer, all regardless of any modification by experience. 
On the contrary, in the same organism the same neurone-action 
will always produce the same result — in the same individual 
the really same situation will always produce the same response. 
The apparent existence of an original sensitivity unconnected 
with any one particular response, so that apparently the same 
cause produces different results, is to be explained in one of 
two ways. First, the apparently same situations may really 
be different, Thus, the sight of a dog to an infant in its 
mother's arms is not the same situation as the sight of a dog to 
an infant alone on the doorstep. Being held in its mother's 
arms is a part of the situation that may account for the response 
of mild curiosity in the former case and fear in the latter. 
Second, if the situations are really identical, the apparently 
same organism really differs. Thus a dog seen by a child, 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 7 

healthy, rested and calm, may lead to only curiosity, whereas, 
if seen by the same child, ill, fatigued, and nervously irritable, 
it may lead to fear. 

Similarly, the really same response is never made to differ- 
ent situations by the same organism. When the same response 
seems to be made to different situations, closer inspection will 
show that the responses do differ; or that the situations were, 
in respect to the element that determined the response, identical ; 
or that the organism is itself different. Thus, though 'a ball 
seen,' 'a tin soldier seen,' and 'a rattle seen' alike provoke 
'reaching for/ the total responses do differ, the central nervous 
system being provoked to three different responses manifested 
as three different sense-impressions — of a ball, of a tin soldier, 
and of a rattle. Thus, if 'ball grasped,' 'tin soldier grasped,' 
and 'rattle grasped' alike provoke 'throwing,' it is because 
only one particular component, common to the three situations, 
is effective in determining the act. Thus, if a child now weeps 
whenever spoken to, whereas before he wept only when hurt or 
scolded, it is because he is now exhausted, excited, or otherwise 
changed. 

The original connections between situation and response are 
never due to chance in its true sense, but there are many minor 
cooperating forces by which a current of conduction in the 
same sensory neurones or receptors may, on different occasions, 
diverge to produce different results in behavior, and by which 
very different sensory stimulations may converge to a substan- 
tially common consequence. 

One may use several useful abstract schemes by which to 
think of man's original equipment of reflexes, instincts and 
capacities. Perhaps the most convenient is a series of S-R con- 
nections of three types. Some are of the type — Si leads to R u 
its peculiar sequent ; some are of the type — Si leads to R x or R 2 



8 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

or R 3 or R 4 or R 5 , etc., according to very minor casual contribu- 
tory causes ; some are of the type — Si leads to R+r 1? S 2 leads to 
R+r 2 , S 3 leads to R-pr 3 etc., where r x> r 2 and r 3 are minor 
results. 

Graphically this scheme is represented by Figs. 1, 2 and 3. 



Fig. i. Sk. 



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Besides such a system of tendencies deciding which response 
any given situation will produce, there are certain tendencies 
that decide the status of features common to all situation-re- 
sponse connections. There is, for example, in man an original 
tendency whereby any connection once made tends, other things 
being equal, to persist. There is also a tendency whereby any 
connection or response may or may not be in readiness to be 
made — may be excited to action easily or with difficulty. 
These tendencies toward the presence or absence of a certain 
feature in all connections or responses will be examined by 
themselves in due time. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 9 

THE ACTION OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 

We can imagine a man's life so arranged that one after 
another original tendency should be called into play, each by 
itself. Let him be in a certain status, and let, successively, 
the light grow five times as intense, snuff be blown up his nos- 
trils, a dear friend approach, and the earth quake, without 
in any case any other changes whatever either in the surround- 
ings or in his internal status. Then the pupils of his eyes 
would contract, he would sneeze, he would smile, and he would 
start. 

The original tendencies of man, however, rarely act one at 
a time in isolation one from another. Life apart from learning 
would not be a simple serial arrangement, over and over, of a 
hundred or so situations, each a dynamic unit ; and of a hundred 
or so responses, fitted to these situations by a one-to-one cor- 
respondence. On the contrary, they cooperate in multitudinous 
combinations. Their combination may be apparent in behavior, 
as when the tendencies to look at a bright moving object, to 
reach for a small object passing a foot away, and to smile at a 
smiling familiar face combine to make a baby smilingly fixate 
and reach for the watch which his father swings. Or the com- 
bination may take place unobserved in the nervous system, as 
when a large animal suddenly approaching a solitary child 
makes him run and hide, though the child in question would 
neither run nor hide at solitude, at the presence of the animal, 
or at the sudden approach of objects in general. 

It is also the case that any given situation does not act 
absolutely as a unit, producing either one total response or none 
at all. Its effect is the total effect of its elements, of which 
now one, now another may predominate in determining re- 
sponse, according to cooperating forces without and within the 
man. The action of the situations which move man's original 



10 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OE MAX 

nature is not that of some thousands of keys each of which 
unlocks one door and does nothing else whatever. Any situa- 
tion is a complex, producing a complex effect ; and so, if 
attendant circumstances van;, a variable effect. In any case 
it does, so to speak, what it can. 



chapter ii 
Man's Equipment of Instincts and Capacities 

I shall not give a complete inventory of human original 
tendencies, much less a full description of each one of them. 
Some of them, such as the tendencies directly concerned in 
food-getting, are of little consequence to school education. 
Concerning some, science can give us little information beyond 
what common-sense observation already reveals. Some, such 
as the tendencies to respond to water in its common forms, 
to wind, to thunder, to strange men, to large animals ap- 
proaching one suddenly, to the dark, to various sorts of 
blows, clutches and restraints, to enclosure, to slimy things, 
creeping things, snakes, blood, pus, entrails and the like, are 
not well enough known to be safely made the basis for edu- 
cational practice. 

The account given here will serve two purposes. First, 
it will list and describe some of the unlearned tendencies 
in man which education has oftenest to work with; and, 
second, it will form the habit of seeking to replace the vague 
facts that man has instincts of 'pugnacity,' 'gregariousness,' 
'cruelty,' 'curiosity,' 'constructiveness,' 'play,' and the like, 
by definite descriptions of what the responses are in each of 
such cases, and what the situations are to which they are 
bound. 

sensory capacities 

To certain situations man responds originally by special 
changes in the first sensory neurones and, through these, by 

ii 



12 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

special changes in other neurones. He is thus affected by the 
situation 'a certain substance in touch with the olfactory mem- 
brane' as he is not by the situation 'that substance in touch with 
his fingers.' To the general pressure, absorption of heat and 
what not that the substance causes in both cases, there are added, 
in the former case, special effects, notably the excitement of 
certain neurones giving the sensation of smell. Well*-known 
illustrations of original tendencies to sensitivity are the capaci- 
ties to receive special impressions via the cones of the retina 
from light waves of 450 to 750 million million vibrations per 
second, that are not received from those of 350 million million 
vibrations (the infra-red) ; and to be influenced by air waves 
of 30 to 30,000 vibrations per second as one is not by air waves 
of 50,000 and over per second, and the like. All the remain- 
ing original tendencies hang by these tendencies to be sensi- 
tive to certain situations in ways in which a stone, a drop of 
water, or a potato-plant is not. Sensitivity, or impressibility, 
or receptivity, is the necessary preliminary to attention, ap- 
proach, flight, and all other features of original intellect and 
character. 

It must not be supposed that the neurone-action which is 
set up by a given stimulus in touch with a given sense- 
organ in a trained adult can fairly be taken as that by which 
he would have responded to the same situation originally. 
Even in sensory capacities original and eventual nature differ. 
The states of consciousness which vibrations of the ether of 
a given rate, or the air-vibrations caused by a given tuning 
fork, or the presence on the tip of the tongue of a tiny drop 
of saturated salt-solution, and the like, provoke by their orig- 
inal connections are probably very unlike the states of con- 
sciousness which the trained analytical psychologist knows. 
The latter does not, by attending to one after another feature of 



SENSITIVITY 13 

the sensed world, eliminate the results of acquired connections. 
On the contrary, his analysis itself occurs precisely by acquiring 
new connections. The overtone which one hears along with 
the fundamental, after training in getting it separately and in 
listening for it in the complex, is created by forming, with a 
part of the stimulus, connections which that part originally 
lacked and so letting it produce a consciousness which it did 
not originally produce. The original capacities of sensation 
do not give us the clear sounds, colors, pressures, degrees of 
heat and cold, and the like, in which long experience has taught 
us to feel the world. To get an idea of the way the world 
would be sensed apart from training, we must subtract all 
that we know about it, and all the definite 'things,' 'qualities' 
and 'relations' which have, in the course of training, been 
analyzed out of the flux of gross sensations. We must take as 
types, the sensations which an adult psychologist gets from 
suffocation, heart-burn, itching or nausea rather than those 
which he gets from a black dot, a 100-vibration tuning fork, or 
a band of spectral light. 

For educational theory and practice, indeed, it is often 
more instructive to consider what is not original in human sen- 
sitiveness to events than what is. That 'dead' and 'bead' are 
seen by an adult reader as they are not by the beginner; 
that v does not look the same to one who cannot add or count 
as it does to us; that the separate tones in a chord may not 
be heard by original nature — such facts as these are the most 
significant results which a student of education gets from sur- 
veying sensory capacities. Just as the training of the expert 
musician makes him hear a symphony as the beginner does 
not, or as the expert tea-taster has acquired tastes which the 
same objects once did not give, — so training in reading, 
mathematics and geography makes a pupil see letters, words, 



14 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

geometrical forms, magnitudes, collections, maps and photo- 
graphs anew; and so the general training of infancy changes 
the original perceptions in response to the different vibration- 
rates of light, degrees of temperature, or amplitudes of sound 
waves. 

ORIGINAL ATTENTIVENESS 

Of the situations to which man is sensitive some originally 
excite the further responses — of disposing him, especially his 
sense organs and central nervous system, to be more em- 
phatically impressed thereby — which we call responses of at- 
tention to the situations in question. Thus, he moves his head 
and eyes so that the light rays from a bright-colored object 
moving across the visual field are kept upon or near the spot 
of clear vision. The features which are so selected for special 
influence upon man vary with sex and age, but are substan- 
tially covered by the rule that man is originally attentive ( i ) 
to sudden change and sharp contrasts and (2) to all the situa- 
tions to which lie has further tendencies to respond, as by flight, 
pursuit, repulsion, play and the like. 

Since, as will be seen in the following chapters, man has 
tendencies to respond to an enormous range of situations by 
visual exploration, manipulation, curiosity and experimenta- 
tion, his attentiveness is omnivorous to an extent not ap- 
proached by any other animals save the monkeys, and far from 
equalled by them. Very early the human infant devotes a large 
fraction of his waking hours to watching what is and happens 
in his neighborhood. When he gains control of reaching and 
grasping he examines what he can move. AYhen he gains 
power to move about, he attends to almost every object that 
he can get to until its possibilities as a stimulus to manipula- 
tion and experimentation are exhausted. In the meantime, 
parts of his own body and the sounds that he and the persons 



BODILY CONTROL 1 5 

and things about him make have been selected from the total 
medleys in which they inhere by the preparation of the sense- 
organs, and perhaps of the neurones associated therewith, to be 
stimulated by this or that sight or sound or touch. 

One is tempted to assert that man is originally attentive to 
everything until its novelty wears off. But certain notable 
lacks show that original attentiveness is the sum of many par- 
ticular tendencies and not an indifferent general capacity. 
For example, man lacks the attentiveness to small differences 
in smells, or small intrusions of new smells into a familiar 
medley, which is so characteristic of many mammals. 

GROSS BODILY CONTROL 

How far man's management of his body in holding up his 
head, sitting, standing, walking, running, stooping, jumping 
up, jumping down, leaping at, crouching, lying down, rolling 
over, climbing, dodging, stooping to pick up, raising oneself 
again, balancing, clinging, pushing with arms and with legs, 
pulling with arms, and in such other movements of position, 
locomotion and the displacement of large objects as man has in 
common with the primates in general, is unlearned, is still a 
disputed question. Reputable opinion can be cited in support 
of remote extremes. 

It appears to the writer that the contribution from training 
is slight, that these accomplishments are in origin much more 
like breathing, winking or sucking, than like playing tennis, 
dancing or swimming. The case of walking is instructive. 
Here, although, under the conditions of civilized family life, 
children appear to learn, or even to be taught, to walk, it has 
been shown that the appearance is illusory.* The baby's trials 

*See, for example, Kirkpatrick ['03], pp. 79-81; Trettien ['00], p. 42; 
Woodworth ['03], p. 315. 



1 6 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

with varying and increasing success are not the causes of a 
habit, but the symptoms of a waxing instinct. The parent's 
tuition does not create a tendency, but only stimulates or re- 
wards it. 

It must be remembered further that gradualness in appear- 
ing and imperfections in early manifestations are entirely con- 
sistent with unlearnedness. The 'perfecting' of a tendency 
may come from the mere inner growth that time implies as 
well as from exercise and tuition. Thus the reactions of run- 
ning, crouching and chirring by chicks when a large object 
is thrown at them are surely unlearned but develop gradually. 
The reactions of roosters in combat are surely unlearned but 
are at the start so 'imperfect' that unless one traces their be- 
havior continuously he will hardly even recognize the early 
manifestations. (These are that two chicks, as young even as 
six days, will suddenly rush at each other, face each other for 
a moment and then go about their previous business.) 'Im- 
perfection' at the start and gradualness in development are the 
rule rather than the exception with all original tendencies. 

I judge therefore that children gain power to manage their 
bodies in connection with the movements listed above, as re- 
quired by the ordinary exigencies of an animal-like life in the 
woods, largely by the inner development of original tendencies.* 
Just how largely cannot be said. I do not assert that man, or 
any of the mammals, would manage his body as well without 
experience as with it, or that all the gross bodily manipula- 
tions listed are as well developed by original nature as walking 
is. But the notion that these activities develop by trial and 
success and imitation wholly, or with slight assistance from 

*If this is the fact, the customary incitements of the nursery are largely 
useless and possibly harmful. So also with many of the maternal precautions 
against childish adventures in locomotion. 



BODILY CONTROL *7 

some very indefinite 'predispositions/ does seem indefensible 
as an account of their causation in the children whom I have 
had opportunity to observe. The 'predispositions' can, on the 
contrary, be relied on to produce the behavior with a very small 
amount of assistance from the pains of stumbling, falling, 
going in the wrong direction and the like, and with no assist- 
ance at all from imitation. 

FOOD-GETTING, PROTECTIVE RESPONSES AND ANGER 

The original tendencies concerned with food-getting, 
habitation, fear, fighting and anger may be described here 
only in part and very briefly. 

Acquisition and Possession. — To any not too large object 
which attracts attention and does not possess repelling or 
frightening features the original response is approach or, if the 
child is within reaching distance, reaching, touching and grasp* 
ing. An object having been grasped, its possession may pn> 
voke the response of putting it in. the mouth, or of general 
manipulation, or both. The sight of another human being 
going for the object or busied with it strengthens the ten- 
dencies toward possession. To resistance the response is pull- 
ing and twisting the object and pushing away whoever or 
whatever is in touch with it. Failure to get nearer, when one 
has moved toward such an object of attention, and failure to 
grasp it when one reaches for it, provoke annoyance, more 
vigorous responses of the same sort as before and the neural 
action which produces an emotion which is the primitive form 
of desire. 

To the situation, 'a person or animal grabbing or making 
off with an object which one holds or has near him as a result 
of recent action of the responses of acquisition,' the responses 



1 8 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

are: — the neural action paralleling the primitive emotion of 
anger, a tight clutch on the object, and pushing, striking and 
screaming at the intruder. 

Hunting. — It is not hard to show that man's original na- 
ture somehow leads to activities which justify us in speaking 
of a hunting instinct. But it is hard to discover just what the 
hunting instinct is. It is, for instance, doubtful whether James 
is right in assuming the 'hunting' response toward "all living 
beasts, great and small," and toward "all human beings in 
whom we perceive a certain intent toward us, and a large num- 
ber of human beings who offend us peremptorily, either by 
their look, or gait, or by some circumstance in their lives which 
we dislike." Is there perhaps, on the contrary, so specialized 
a tendency as that to rob birds' nests, as Schneider maintains? 
Just what, in any case, are the situations and the responses, 
referred to by the hunting instinct ? 

In the writer's opinion they are as follows : 

To 'a. small escaping object,' man, especially if hungry, 
responds, apart from training, by pursuit, being satisfied when 
he draws nearer to it. When within pouncing distance, he 
pounces upon it, grasping at it. If it is not seized he is an- 
noyed. If it is seized, he examines, manipulates and dismem- 
bers it, unless some contrary tendency is brought into action 
by its sliminess, sting or the like. To 'an object of moderate 
size and not of offensive mien moving away from or past him' 
man originally responds much as noted above, save that in 
seizing the object chased, he is likely to throw himself upon it, 
bear it to the ground, choke and maul it until it is completely 
subdued, giving then a cry of triumph. 

With both small and larger 'game,' there is, I think, a ten- 
dency to bring the captured animal to some familiar human 
being. 



FOOD GETTING 19 

The responses of cautious approach, ot fighting, of avoid- 
ance and of protective behavior may be mingled in all sorts of 
ways with the hunting responses in accordance with variations 
in the size of the animal, the offensiveness of its mien, and 
the struggle it makes when seized, and in accordance with its 
alternations from flight to resistance or attack. 

The presence of this tendency in man's nature under the 
conditions of civilized life gets him little food and much trouble. 
There being no wild animals to pursue, catch and torment 
into submission or death, household pets, young and timid 
children, or even aunts, governesses or nurse-maids, if suffi- 
ciently yielding, provoke the responses from the young. The 
older indulge the propensity at great cost of time and money 
in hunting beasts, or at still greater cost of manhood in hound- 
ing Quakers, abolitionists, Jews, Chinamen, scabs, prophets, or 
suffragettes of the non-militant variety. Teasing, bullying, 
cruelty, are thus in part the results of one of nature's means of 
providing self and family with food : and what grew up as a 
pillar of human self-support has become so extravagant a 
luxury as to be almost a vice. 

Possible Specialized Tendencies. — It is possible that ten- 
dencies to seek particular objects as food and to capture them 
by specialized sets of movements may also be original in man. 
Thus Schneider ['82] thinks that bird's nests and eggs are 
situations of particular potency to attract attention and posses- 
sion, and Acher ['io] seems to think that throwing stones, 
hitting with a club, and cutting with pointed objects are re- 
sponses apart from learning. It has been asserted that there is 
a special instinct to insert the fingers into crannies (to dislodge 
small animals hidden there) ! There is some evidence to 
show that a small object held out or tossed to a young human 
is more readily seized and tasted than one otherwise encount- 



20 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

ered, and that he will eat food that he himself picks up more 
readily than the same food when put in his mouth by another. 

Collecting and Hoarding. — There is originally a blind ten- 
dency to take portable objects which attract attention, and 
carry them to one's habitation. There is the further response 
of satisfaction at contemplating and fingering them there. 
These tendencies commonly crystallize into habits of collecting 
and storing certain sorts of objects whose possession has addi- 
tional advantages, and abort as responses to other objects whose 
possession brings secondary annoyances. Thus, money, mar- 
bles, strings, shells, cigar-tags and picture-postals become fav- 
ored objects by their power in exchange, convenience of car- 
riage, permanent attractiveness and utility in play. But clear 
evidences of the original tendency may remain, as in those who 
feel a craving to gather objects which they know will be a 
nuisance to them or who cannot bear to diminish hoards which 
serve no purpose save that of being a hoard. So of the man 
who stole utensils from his own kitchen to increase his hoard, 
and bought substitutes ! 

Fear. — The inner perturbation which we call the emotion 
of fear, running, crouching, clinging, starting, trembling, re- 
maining stock-still, screaming, covering the eyes, opening the 
mouth and eyes, a temporary cessation followed by an 
acceleration of the heart-beat, difficulty in breathing and 
paleness, sweating and erection of the hair are responses of 
which certain ones seem bound, apart from training, to 
certain situations, such as sudden loud noises or clutches, the 
sudden appearance of strange objects, thunder and lightning, 
loneliness, and the dark. 

Since the responses and the situations provoking them 
which are involved in what men call instinctive fear are both 
so numerous, there should be. in an account of original nature, 



PROTECTIVE RESPONSES 21 

a section telling just which of the responses are bound to each 
of the situations, and how firmly. As yet this has not been 
done, or even attempted. 

Surely, however, the sciences of human nature cannot rest 
content with the fact that by original nature strange men 
and animals advancing toward us with threatening mien, 
thunder and lightning, reptiles, darkness, solitude, dark holes 
and corners, rats, spiders and other creeping things, sudden 
noises, contacts and clutches unprepared for tend to produce 
more or less an indeterminate assortment of discomfort, run- 
ning, crouching, screaming, clinging, trembling, and so on. 
They need to know just what the effect of each of these situa- 
tion-elements is. Practically, it makes a great difference 
whether a man responds only with discomfort, palpitations and 
the inner subjective fear, still shooting at the enemy, or also 
runs and hides. Theoretically, it makes a great difference 
whether the situations involved are regarded as producing in- 
discriminately a vague X, fear, which then may at random 
produce any assortment of its various 'expressions,' or are 
regarded as each producing, under the same conditions, an 
effect proper to it and to nothing but it. In the latter case we 
are encouraged to study the exact details of human behavior 
in fear, tho we may never know them, while in the former 
case we are told beforehand that they are unknowable. 

As a sample of such inquiries, let us ask whether each of the 
situations tends equally to provoke each of the responses and 
in the same degree, so that one or another, or one after another,, 
and more or less of it, will come according to accidental physio- 
logical conditions in the animal. Surely not. The 'fear' due 
to a large animal coming toward one rapidly is not the 
same as the 'fear' due to thunder and lightning. The large 
animal is much more likely to be responded to by running than 



22 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

by hiding. With thunder and lightning the reverse is true. 
Still surer is the specialization of the intensity of the response. 
One can vary the amount of a child's 'starting' from a con- 
traction hardly perceptible up to one approaching a convulsion, 
by varying the stimulus. Can anyone doubt that each degree 
of strangeness or suddenness has a determinate effect ? 

Consider the specialized effects of solitude, of sounds com- 
pared with sights, and of seeing a large animal approaching 
one rapidly compared with grasping a cold clammy reptile. 
In my opinion at least, the clutching, clinging and nestling re- 
sponses are relatively rare in solitude, tho occasionally a 
human being, so frightened, will clutch at trees or even at 
nothing. Fearful sounds rarely provoke turning the head 
away and covering the eyes, but fearful sights often do. A 
large animal approaching one rapidly and distant, say, forty 
feet, is often responded to by turning and running, but very 
rarely by jumping backwards. The reverse is true of the 
response to the same animal met suddenly at a distance of three 
feet, or to a clutch (from in front) in the dark. 

It is probable further that an impartial survey of human 
behavior, unprejudiced by the superstition that a magic state 
of consciousness, 'fear,' is aroused by 'danger,' and then creates 
flight and other symptoms of itself, would show that pursuit 
and capture may produce distinctive responses whether or no 
the peculiar inner trepidation which introspection knows is 
present. A large object coming rapidly toward one seems often 
to provoke instinctive turning, fleeing, seeking cover (and the 
human horde, if that is present) without necessarily doing 
more. Being pounced on or grasped by a large object seems 
often to be responded to by instinctive dodging, writhing and 
pulling, without anything that deserves the name of the inner 
emotion of fear. 



/ 



FIGHTING 23 



Fighting. — Tendencies to fight are certainly inherent in 
man's nature, the situations, responses and bonds concerned 
being apparently the following : 

(1) To the situation, 'being interfered with in any bodily 
movements which the individual is impelled by its own con- 
stitution to make, the interference consisting in holding the 
individual/ the little child makes instinctively responses of 
stiffening, writhing and throwing back the head and shoulders. 
These are supplemented or replaced by kicking, pushing, slap- 
ping, scratching and biting in the older. This tendency, if it 
exists, may be called the instinct of escape from restraint. 

(2) To a similar situation, with the difference that the 
interference is by getting in the way or shoving, the responses 
are: — dodging around, pushing with hands or body, hitting, 
pulling and (though, I think, much less often) slapping, kick- 
ing and biting. This may be called the instinct of overcoming 
a moving obstacle. 

Parents who are scientific observers w r ill admit the existence 
and unlearnedness of these two tendencies, and, I think, will by 
close observation find that they are fairly distinguishable one 
from the other, and both from the forms of anger and fighting 
whose description follows. The angry behavior in these two 
cases usually ceases when the confinement or obstruction ceases, 
and rarely leads to more violent behavior thereafter, whereas 
in some other cases it is maintained and may arouse the hunting 
instinct, teasing, bullying and cruelty after its own immediate 
end has been attained. 

(3) To the situation 'being seized, slapped, chased or bitten 
(by any object), the escape-movements having been ineffective 
or inhibited for any reason,' the fighting movements or the 
paralysis of terror may be the response. When the former 
occurs, the total complex may be called the instinct of counter- 
attack. 



24 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

To the particular situations that arise when attack provokes 
counter-attack, there are, I believe, particular responses. If 
A clings to B, trying to throw him down or bite him, B will, 
by original nature, more often try to push A away or throw him 
down than to hit or bite him. If A rushes at B, slapping, 
scratching and kicking, B will, by original nature, more often 
hit and kick at A than try to push him away or throw him 
down. I believe that there is a basis in original nature for the 
distinction in sport between the fight with fists, which I judge 
to be a refinement (inappropriate as the word may seem) of 
the 'slap-scratch-poke' fighting, and the wrestling match, which 
I judge to be a refinement of the 'push-pull-throw down-jump 
upon' fighting. When A and B are both down, the response 
is an effort to get on top. When A is beaten, it is originally 
satisfying to B to sit on him (or it), to stand exulting beside 
him (or it), and to remain unsatisfied (if A is a human being) 
until A has given signs of general submissiveness. Many other 
specialized original tendencies, such as to remove things from 
different parts of the body in different ways, and to duck the 
head and lift up the arm, bent at the elbow, in response to the 
situation, 'an object coming toward the head rapidly,' appear 
in the course of a fight. 

(4) To the situation 'sudden pain' the response is attack 
upon any moving object near at hand. This may be called 
the instinct of irrational response to pain. This fact, common 
in everyone's experience, may of course be interpreted as an 
acquired habit of response by analogy, but it seems to the writer 
that it is a true and beautiful case of nature's very vague, 
imperfect adaptations, which only on the whole and in a state 
of nature are useful. When a loving child with indigestion 
beats its mother who is trying to rock it to sleep (though it 
would protest still more if not rocked), or when a benevolent 



FIGHTING 25 

master punches the servant who is lifting his gouty foot, the 
contrary habits seem too strong to be overcome by the force of 
mere analogy with an acquired habit of hitting in response to 
the pain of conflict. Indeed the existence of the latter habit is 
in such cases only a matter of speculation. 

( 5 ) To the situation, 'an animal of the same species toward 
whom one has not taken the attitude of submission and who 
does not take it toward him' the human male responds by 
threatening movements, shoving the person away, and, if these 
fail to produce the attitude of submission, by either submission 
or further attack. The encounter is closed by the submission 
of either party, which may take place at any point. This 
tendency may be called the instinct of combat in rivalry. 

(6) To the situation, 'the mere presence of a male of the 
same species during acts of courtship,' the human male tends to 
respond by threatening or attacking movements until the in- 
truder is driven away or the disturbed one himself flees. 

(7) Either as habits of analogy developing from these 
specialized tendencies, or as an equally original but vaguer 
tendency in addition to them, the following behavior occurs : — 

To the situation — being for some length of time thwarted 
in any instinctive response by any thing, especially if the thwart- 
ing continues after one has done various things to evade it, the 
response-group of pushing, kicking, hitting, etc., is made, the 
attack continuing until the situation is so altered as to produce 
instinctively other responses, such as fulfilling the original 
activity, hunting, mangling, triumphing over, or fleeing from, 
the thwarting thing. 

The state of affairs, angry and pugnacious behavior, is 
apparently satisfying. Of course, some of the situations that 
provoke it are far from satisfying intrinsically, but the re- 
sponses made to them are, and often are enough so to make 



26 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 



one rather seek than avoid the situation itself. The misery 
reported in connection with anger seems to be an after-effect, 
the accompaniment of shame, grief, or rational deprecation of 
one's past behavior, or of the exhaustion due to it. 



CHAPTER III 

Man's Equipment of Instincts and Capacities (con- 
tinued): Responses to the Behavior of Other 
Human Beings 

Human intercourse and institutions are as surely rooted and 
grounded in original nature as man's struggles with the rest of 
nature for food and safety. The first, and all in all the great- 
est, social bond and condition is the original behavior of mother 
to young. 

MOTHERLY BEHAVIOR 

All women possess originally, from early childhood to 
death, some interest in human babies, and a responsiveness to 
the instinctive looks, calls, gestures and cries of infancy and 
childhood, being satisfied by childish gurglings, smiles and 
affectionate gestures, and moved to instinctive comforting acts 
by childish signs of pain, grief and misery. Brutal habits may 
destroy, or competing habits overgrow, or the lack of exercise 
weaken, these tendencies, but they are none the less as original 
as any fact in human nature. 

With the changes in the woman's nature and life that con- 
ception and child-birth bring, these tendencies gain new power 
and special attachments. To a woman who has given birth to 
a child, a baby to see and hold and suckle is perhaps the most 
potent satisfaction life can offer, its loss the cause of saddest 
yearning. To a woman who has given birth to a child, the 
baby she sees, holds and nurses appeals almost irresistibly when 
it gives the cry of hunger, pain or distress, the start of surprise, 

27 



28 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

the scream of fear, the smiles of comfort, the cooing and gurg- 
ling and shouting of vocal play. She cuddles it when it cries, 
smiles when it smiles, fondles and coos to it in turn. As the 
first human face it sees and turns to follow, as the familiar form 
which it nestles against in comfort and clutches in fear, she 
wins its tokens of affection. When it later points at objects, 
she looks and shares its interest. And later still, every signal 
of joy, or grief, or pain by this being whom she has held and 
nursed and fondled, has its quick response. In all this, original 
nature is the prime mover and essential continuing force. 

This series of situations and responses constitutes the 
'maternal instinct' in its most typical form. But, as do all 
original tendencies, it acts somehow, though its ordinary situa- 
tions be complicated or deformed. To have given birth to a 
child, though ordinarily an enormous intensifier of maternal 
care, is not a sine qua non. The sequence may, though less 
surely, begin with holding and nursing. Similarly, suckling 
the child, though ordinarily an enormous intensifier of maternal 
care, may be absent but still leave the situation potent enough 
to arouse the later sequences. So childless women, who lack 
also the stimuli of care of early infancy, may yet manifest the 
later tendencies toward the children they adopt. 

Boys and men share more in the instinctive good will 
toward children than traditional opinion would admit, though 
the tendencies are not so strong, and the responses are different. 
Very weak in the specific tendencies to clasp and carry an infant 
(the proverbial distress and awkwardness of the male when 
an infant is thrust into his arms, as contrasted with the typical 
woman's 'Let me hold him,' is at bottom instinctive) and to 
fondle and prattle to it, and lacking also the special incitement 
of the tendency due to the inner changes of child-birth and 
lactation, they yet in their own way respond to many of its 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 29 

appeals. To offer a little child scraps of food and see it eat, 
to snatch it from peril by animals, and to smile approvingly at 
its more vigorous antics, seem to me to be truly original ten- 
dencies of the human male. 

Male thoughtlessness and brutality toward children, and 
whatever living being or thing makes a similar appeal, is due 
not to total absence of kindliness, but rather to the presence of 
the competing tendencies of the hunting instinct, which is as 
much stronger in men than in women as the maternal instinct 
is stronger in women than in men. 

RESPONSES TO THE PRESENCE, APPROVAL AND SCORN OF MEN 

Gregariousness. — Man responds to the absence of human 
beings by discomfort, and to their presence by a positive satis- 
faction. Kidd's statement about Kafir children holds true of 
man in general. In his games and work, too, "there is much 
that looks like sheer animal love for gregarious fellowship.'' 

The rich satisfaction of the presence of even a single com- 
panion consists not only in allowing various desirable activities 
which need a fellowman as their stimulus, but also in the mere 
fact that he is there. Being one of a crowd adds new instinc- 
tive exhilarations, irrespective of any particular benefits the 
situation may be expected to produce. McDougall and James 
have both emphasized the part this tendency plays in our 
recreations. The former says : 

"In civilized communities we may see evidence of the oper- 
ation of this instinct on every hand. For all but a few excep- 
tional, and generally highly cultivated, persons the one essential 
condition of recreation is the being one of a crowd. The 
normal daily recreation of the population of our towns is to go 
out in the evening and to walk up and down the streets in 
which the throng is densest — the Strand, Oxford Street, or the 



30 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Old Kent Road; and the smallest occasion — a foreign prince 
driving to a railway station or a Lord Mayor's Show — will 
line the streets for hours with many thousands whose interest 
in the prince or the show alone would hardly lead them to take 
a dozen steps out of their way. On their few short holidays 
the working classes rush together from town and country alike 
to those resorts in which they are assured of the presence of a 
large mass of their fellows. It is the same instinct working 
on a slightly higher plane that brings tens of thousands to the 
cricket and football grounds on half-holidays." ['08, p. 86] 

A similar argument could be made in the case of our reli- 
gious worship, the organization of schools, the preference of 
young women for factory labor over domestic service, and 
almost any other human activity. 

Responses of Attention to Human Beings. — Man has a 
special original interest in the behavior of other men. Doubt- 
less this, in infancy, is largely due to the mere variety in move- 
ment which human beings have in common with dogs, mechani- 
cal toys, the leaves of trees and the like. But it is hardly wholly 
due thereto. The human face is too early singled out from 
other objects and too constantly a controller of attention. 
Chamberlain hardly exaggerates when he says that "the face 
of its elders is the child's chart and compass in the first voyages 
of life." ['00, p. 189.] Evidence is found in the difference 
between the sexes in respect to it. If measurements are taken 
of the strength of the interest in the intellectual and moral 
traits of people compared to the strength of the interest in the 
mechanical operations of things, women differ notably from 
men. It seems necessary, therefore, to admit that the specific 
form and features and characteristic behavior of man, as in 
smiling, crying, or jabbering, attract attention to him and what 
he does. 

Attention-getting. — There seems to be, though one cannot 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 31 

be sure, a real, though easily counteracted, tendency to respond 
to the presence of an inoffensive human being by approaching, 
gesticulating, calling, and general restless annoyance until he 
notices one. A man entering a room where another stands 
absorbed will often, in spite of the conventions of cityfied habits, 
feel a measurable irritation, walk past him, ring for a waiter, 
or the like, though he would not have felt and done so, had the 
room been empty. Children seem to act in this way irrespec- 
tive both of any acquired intention to win approval, and of the 
more aggressive behavior which we call self-assertiveness or 
display. 

Responses to Approving and to Scornful Behavior. — To 
the situation, 'intimate approval, as by smiles, pats, admission 
to companionship and the like, from one to whom he has the 
inner response of submissiveness,' and to the situation, 'humble 
approval, as by admiring glances, from anybody,' man responds 
originally by great satisfaction. The withdrawal of approving 
intercourse by masters and looks of scorn and derision from 
anyone originally provoke a discomfort that may strengthen to 
utter wretchedness. 

The reader will understand that the approval and disap- 
proval which are thus satisfying and annoying to the natural 
man are far from identical, in either case, with the behavior 
which proceeds from cultivated moral approbation and condem- 
nation. The sickly frown of a Sunday-school teacher at her 
scholar's mischief may be prepotently an attention to him rather 
than the others, may contain a semi-envious recognition of him 
as a force to be reckoned with, and may even reveal a lurking 
admiration for his deviltry. It then will be instinctively ac- 
cepted as approval. 

Darwin long ago noted the extraordinarily ill-proportioned 
misery that comes from committing some blunder in society 



32 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

whereat people involuntarily ''look down' on one for an instant. 
Except for him. little attention has been paid to the originality 
:: the hunger of man for the externals of admiration and the 
intolerability of objective scorn and derision. Yet these forces 
of approval and disapproval in appropriate form from those 
above and those below us in mastery-status, are and have been 
potent social controls. For example the 'discipline' of a 
humane home or school today relies almost entirely upon such 
approval from above, and finds it evea more effective than 
severe sensuous pains and deprivations. The elaborate para- 
phernalia and rites of fashion in clothes exist chiefly by virtue 
of their value as means of securing diffuse notice and approval. 
The primitive sex display is now a minor cause: women ob- 
viously dress for other women's eyes. Much the same is true 
of subservience to fashions in furniture, food, manners, morals 
and religion. The institution of tipping, which began per- 
haps in kindliness and was fostered by economic self-interest, 
is now well-nigh impregnable because no man is brave enough 
to withstand the scorn of a line of lackeys whom he heartily 
despises, or of a few onlc okers whom he will never see again. 

Best of all illustrations of the potent craving for objective 
approval, perhaps, is offered by Yeblen's brilliant analysis of 
the economic activities of the leisure class. These he finds 
to be essentially vicarious consumption and conspicuous waste. 
or the maintenance of a useless retinue and public prodigality 
in order to show that you have more than you can use, and so 
to fix upon you the admiring glances of those who can afford 
to waste less or nothing at all. 

Rcsr: rises ' A - yrai ing and Scornful Behazior. — To mani- 
fest approving and disapproving behavior is as original a 
tendency as to be satisfied and annoyed by them. Smiles.. 
respectful stares and encouraging shouts occur, I think, as 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 33 

instinctive responses to relief from hunger, rescue from fear, 
gorgeous display, instinctive acts of strength and daring, 
victory, and other impressive instinctive behavior that is harm- 
less to the onlooker. Similarly, frowns, hoots and sneers seem 
bound as original responses to the observation of empty-handed- 
ness, deformity, physical meanness, pusillanimity, and defect. 
As in the case of all original tendencies, such behavior is early 
complicated, and in the end much distorted, by training; but 
the resulting total cannot be explained by nurture alone. 

MASTERING AND SUBMISSIVE BEHAVIOR 

There is, I believe, an original tendency to respond to 'the 
presence of a human being who notices one, but without approv- 
ing or submissive behavior' by holding the head up and a little 
forward, staring at him or not looking at him at all, or alter- 
nating staring and ignoring, doing whatever one is doing some- 
what more rapidly and energetically and making displays of 
activity, and by satisfaction if the person looks on without 
interference or scorn. There is a further tendency to go up to 
such an unprotesting human being, increasing the erection and 
projection of the head, looking him in the eye, and perhaps 
nudging or shoving him. There is also an original tendency to 
feel satisfaction at the appearance and continuance of submis- 
sive behavior on the part of the human beings one meets. These 
tendencies we may call the instinct of attempt at mastery. Such 
behavior is much commoner in the male than in the female. In 
her the forward thrust of the head, the approach, displays of 
strength, nudging and shoving are also commonly replaced by 
facial expressions and other less gross movements. 

If the human being who answers these tendencies assumes 
a submissive behavior, in essence a lowering of head and 
3 



34 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

shoulders, wavering glance, absence of all preparations for 
attack, general weakening of muscle tonus, and hesitancy in 
movement, the movements of attempt at mastery become modi- 
fied into attempts at the more obvious swagger, strut and glare 
of triumph. The submissive attitude may also provoke the 
master to protect the submissive one. If the human being pro- 
tests by thrusting his head up and out, glaring back, and not 
giving way to advance, the aggressor either becomes submissive 
or there is more or less of a conflict of looks, gestures, yells, or 
actual attacks, until, as was described under the fighting instinct, 
the submission of one or the exhaustion of both. 

There is an original tendency to respond to the situation, 
'the presence of a human being larger than oneself, of angry 
or mastering aspect,' and to blows and restraint, by submissive 
behavior. When weak from wounds, sickness or fatigue, the 
tendency is stronger. The man who is bigger, who can out- 
yell and outstare us, who can hit us without our hitting him, 
and who can keep us from moving, does originally extort a 
crestfallen, abashed physique and mind. Women in general 
are thus by original nature submissive to men in general. Sub- 
missive behavior is apparently not annoying when assumed as 
the instinctive response to its natural stimulus. Indeed, it is 
perhaps a common satisfier. 

Every human being thus tends by original nature to arrive 
at a status of mastery or submission toward every other human 
being, and even under the more intelligent customs of civilized 
life somewhat of the tendency persists in many men. 

The original behavior in mastery and submission, and in 
approving, disapproving, being approved and being scorned, 
derided and neglected, becomes very much complicated by dif- 
ferences in the sex of the person who is the situation, and in 
the sex and maturity of the person who is responding, by an 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 35 

increase in the number of persons who are the situation, and 
by the presence in the situation of elements provocative of 
curiosity, fear, anger, repugnance, the hunting instinct, kindli- 
ness, sexual attraction and coy behavior. My account of at- 
tempt at mastery, for instance, would be only partly true of any 
cases save those where the situation and the response were the 
behaviors of two males of about the same degree of physical 
maturity. Mastery and submission are fit illustrations of the 
universal fact that the many unit tendencies to respond to 
characteristic situations combine in elaborately complex totals. 
This fact makes the original social tendencies of man seem, at 
first sight, like a hopelessly unpredictable muddle of domineer- 
ing, subservience, notice, disregard, sex pursuit, aversion, show- 
ing off, shyness, fear, confidence, cruelty and kindness. It also 
makes such unit-tendencies as I have described under approval, 
scorn, mastery and submission seem abstract and schematic, 
as indeed, they are. 

Space is lacking in this book, and knowledge in its author, 
to trace in the bewildering complexes of human intercourse, 
the combined effect of the unit-tendencies which I have out- 
lined. We may be confident, however, that, did we know 
enough, we should find that whether a person will in a given 
case be shy, or indulge in display, or alternate between the two 
— whether he will domineer or plead in courtship — whether he 
will respond toward a given child by approval, domineering, 
bullying, protection, hunting or fondling — could in every case 
be prophesied from knowledge of the situation and of him. 



' OTHER SOCIAL INSTINCTS 

Rivalry. — No one can doubt that the facts vaguely referred 
to by Emulation or Rivalry have some basis in man's inborn 



36 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

organization ; but, as with maternal affection, pugnacity or the 
hunting instinct, it is necessary to define the tendencies and 
separate out those elements of them which are original from 
those into which they grow in the course of man's social 
training. 

The two essential facts in rivalry are: the increased vigor 
in man's activity when other men are engaged in the same 
activity and the satisfyingness of superiority to them. It may 
be that in the course of life any sort of fellow-working or 
playing becomes a stimulus, and any sort of superiority a satis- 
fier. But original nature has no such desire for abstract super- 
iority, and its responses to fellow-working and playing are 
limited to the work and play which one's fellows instinctively 
pursue. Original emulation or rivalry is, in the first place, a 
group of tendencies to respond more vigorously in trying to get 
some one's attention upon perceiving a fellow creature's at- 
tempts to get it, in chasing some animal upon perceiving a 
fellow creature chasing it, in pulling toward one's self a thing 
when a fellow creature is pulling it toward himself, in running 
toward an object toward which he runs, and the like. In the 
second place, it is the responses of annoyance at being deprived 
of some one's attention by another, of satisfaction at getting 
some one's attention in spite of another, of annoyance at being 
outdone in the chase, the seizure or the struggle, of satisfaction 
in getting the prey, retaining the toy or being on top in spite 
of competitors, and the like. 

It is upon such special stimulations and satisfactions rather 
than upon a diffuse imitativeness and craving for superiority 
that education at the start has to rely. As Dr. Ordahl, who 
has given the best single account of the facts of animal and 
human rivalry, says : 'That it has become an instinctive response 
to all situations involving a possible chance of surpassing 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 37 

another, we have, I think, much evidence to show improbable. 
It is an instinctive response only when the situation involves 
the natural tendencies of the animal." ['08, p. 506.] 

Envious and Jealous Behavior. — It is an original tendency 
of man to be annoyed by the perception of another* receiving 
certain attention and treatment which his own behavior would 
otherwise get for himself. Young children are thus intolerant 
of the fondling of others by their mother ; lovers, of the atten- 
tiveness of their mates to others ; mothers, of the affection and 
notice given by their children to others. There seems, how- 
ever, to be no uniform behavior characteristic of these jealous 
discomforts. Attacks on the competing object, seizure and 
holding of the person whose attitude toward one is being made 
inadequate, general raging, sulking, pining, grief and other 
activities are manifested. The original basis of envy seems to 
be simply discomfort at seeing others approved, and at being 
outdone by them. 

Ownership. — By the instinct of ownership may be meant 
either original tendencies to resist the abstraction from one's 
person or immediate neighborhood of 'an object which one is 
using or has recently (within a few minutes) acquired, or 
original tendencies to be satisfied by having on one's person 
or within the range of one's senses many objects with which no 
one interferes. The former have already been listed under the 
instinct of possession ; the latter are more doubtful. The very 
common enjoyment of owning, that is, having complete power 
over, things rather than merely using them subject to possi- 
bilities of interference or despoiliation, no matter how remote, 
is the outgrowth of training cooperating with one or both of 
these tendencies. 

*The 'other' may be a thing or an event as well as a person. 



38 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Kindliness. — The situation, 'a living thing displaying 
hungry, frightened or pained behavior by wailing, clinging, 
holding out its arms and the like,' provokes attention and dis- 
comfort and may, if attendant circumstances do not shunt be- 
havior over to the hunting, avoiding or triumphing responses, 
provoke acts of relief. 

Another aspect of original kindliness is the positive satis- 
fyingness of witnessing behavior characteristic of welfare in 
our fellows. Even the mean and brutal man naturally likes, 
apart from periods of rage and hunting, to see people happy. 
The happy behavior of others is pleasant, as flowers, sunshine 
and food are. It provokes, if competing responses are not too 
strong, kindly behavior in the shape of welcome, smiles, 
laughter, and the sharing of food. This kindly behavior is 
not necessarily confined to human beings; the child may offer 
a part of his cooky to a toy, or caress a flower. As Cooley 
says, "it flows out upon all the pleasantness the child finds 
about him." ['02, p. 47.] In an ordinary environment, how- 
ever, people are its main stimuli and recipients. 

Teasing, Tormenting and Bullying. — Teasing, tormenting 
and bullying are the most notable inborn exceptions to childish 
kindliness. They are due, I judge, to the competing tendencies 
to manipulation and curiosity, hunting, scorn and mastery. 
Manipulation and curiosity easily develop into teasing. A child 
tends to do all sorts of things to people as well as to things, and 
is restless at the quiescence of a person as he is at that of any 
object. If the person who is pulled, poked, hit, called to, run 
after or jumped upon plays back, the natural course of develop- 
ment is toward what is called play. If the person reacts by 
energetic and victorious angry behavior, the child abandons its 
manipulation and pleased interest in what the person will do 
in favor of fighting, flight or submissive appeal. If the person 



THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS 39 

neither plays back nor punishes, but behaves in a vexed, sullen, 
frightened or insufficiently punitive angry way, the child will, 
according to its total make-up and the temporary set of its 
mind, abandon, continue or increase his curious manipulation of 
the person, and the observer will call his behavior teasing or 
tormenting. Teasing those who are unable or unwilling to 
revenge themselves then inevitably becomes a habit in the case 
of children of mean and brutal natures. 

When the hunting responses are called forth by a human 
being, they (alone or in combination with attempted mastery) 
produce a special form of play typically characterized, as Burk 
has shown, by "pursuing, throwing down, holding down, put- 
ting knee on vanquished victim, pinching, pulling hair, pulling 
ears, striking, shaking, throwing missiles, dancing about con- 
quered victim, laughing, clapping hands, . . . smiling, a tri- 
umphant air." ['97, p- 228.] In the course of training, 
threats may to any extent replace the actual treatment of the 
person as prey or slave. Many degrees of intermixture of the 
responses provided to an animal to be caught, torn to pieces 
and eaten, and of those provided to an antagonist before and 
after he gives instinctive tokens of submission, are found. 
Obviously such cruelty and bullying can occur only when the 
one who arouses the hunting and mastering responses is unwill- 
ing or unable to protect himself. Such a one also probably 
specially arouses them. 

The history of slave-driving, hazing, persecution, and the 
almost universal inequitable use of delegated powers by gov- 
ernors, generals, popes, school-masters and all those in authority, 
warrants the conviction that the hunting response does not 
originally distinguish man from other animals at all surely, and 
that submissive behavior does not as uniformly bring release 
from aggression in man as it does in the mammals in general. 



40 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Motherly behavior and the other instinctive forms of kindliness 
are very inadequate protections against the inborn impulses to 
cruelty. In children of mean and brutal nature, bullying is 
therefore almost sure to occur unless it is deliberately stamped 
out by education. 

IMITATION 

Imitation is a word of too many different meanings to be 
used without qualifications. It may mean a tendency to make 
movements similar to those made in the animal's presence, or a 
tendency to produce a result similar to a result produced in the 
animal's presence, or a tendency to use the behavior of other 
animals in any way as a model or guide influencing one's be- 
havior toward some degree of likeness thereto. The behavior 
of other animals may be regarded as working immediately, 
making the animal do the like in the same way that a loud noise 
makes him jump ; or by arousing an idea of the movement ; or 
by arousing an idea of the result produced ; or by arousing an 
idea that has by habit led to the movement ; or by arousing- ideas 
of various sorts that indirectly make his behavior more like the 
behavior of the other animal than it would otherwise have been. 
Indeed, imitation is used by Tarde and other sociological writ- 
ers, to mean little more than the repetition, for any reason, of 
ideas and acts and feelings like those which other men have or 
have had. 

It is better, therefore, instead of asking vaguely whether 
imitation of other men is an original tendency in man, to put 
separately the following questions : — 

Ai. Do the sense-presentations (chiefly through sight) of 
all movements as made by another produce in man, apart from 
all training, identical movements ? 

A2. Similar movements? 



IMITATION 4 1 

A3. Tendencies to make similar movements? 

A4. If some, but not all movements, have this power, 
which are they? 

Bi. Do the sense-presentations of all positions of the body 
taken by another, all sounds made, all facial expressions as- 
sumed and other results of movement upon the mover's body, 
produce in man, apart from all training, movements resulting 
in identical positions, sounds and looks? 

B2. Similar ones ? 

B3. Tendencies to make movements resulting in identical 
or similar ones ? 

B4. If some but not all positions, sounds, looks, and the 
like have this power, which are they ? 

GENERAL IMITATIVENESS 

In spite of the frequency of statements that the child makes 
every gesture that he sees and every sound that he hears, no 
one who has tried to teach infants to talk, or five-year-olds to 
write and sing^ will for a moment believe that behavior wit- 
nessed produces identical behavior by any original potency. 
Writers who have seemed to say so cannot, if possessed of any 
sense for fact, have meant what they said. Questions Ai and 
Bi can be dismissed each with a flat NO. At the most a gen- 
eral tendency to imitate can only be as in A2 and B2 a tendency 
to make movements, or get results, that are somewhat like 
whatever ones are witnessed. 

I can find no evidence that any such tendency is original in 
man. As will be stated later, certain particular sorts of be- 
havior do originally provoke in the spectator behavior that 
resembles them, but, so far as I can see, behavior in general 
does not. Consider the difficulty of getting an infant to even 



42 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

approximately 'wave a bye-bye,' 'pat-a-cake,' 'blow a kiss,' or 
'spit it out;' and the extreme difficulty of getting him to blow 
his nose, clear his throat, or gargle. Sit before him and per- 
form time after time a score of such novel but simple acts as 
putting your right hand on your head and your left on your 
right shoulder. He does not in nine cases out of ten do any- 
thing more like the act you perform than like any other one 
of the twenty. 

Of course, after he has performed many acts as sequents to 
many situations, the latter including often the perception or 
idea of the act, you may frequently, by performing an act, get 
him to perform it also. But his act is then a result of learning, 
not of instinct ; and your behavior provokes it in the same way 
that a verbal suggestion might. The course of human educa- 
tion is such that among the situations to which acts are bound 
as sequents, ideas of the acts are frequent. A human being's 
behavior thus often provokes similar behavior in another by 
provoking an idea to which it is, by past learning, a sequent. 
Such influence of one person upon another illustrates, however, 
the laws of habit, and nothing more. 

Cooley, who watched especially for evidence of general 
instinctive imitativeness in his children, found none that could 
not be explained better as the result of general activity or of 
learning. He notes sagaciously that, in one of the most plaus- 
ible appearances of imitation, the behavior of another person 
probably acted simply as the first step in a habit, since a verbal 
request produced the behavior in question even more surely. 
"M. had a trick of raising her hands above her head, which she 
would perform, when in the mood for it, either imitatively, 
when someone else did it, or in response to the words 'How big 
is M?', but she responded more readily in the second or non- 
imitative way than in the other." ['02, edition of 1910, p. 27.] 



IMITATION 43 

I believe the same absence of evidence of any general or- 
iginal production of similar behavior by behavior witnessed 
holds good for sounds as well. To the hypothesis that seeing 
the movements of another's mouth-parts or hearing a series of 
sounds in and of itself produces similar movements or sounds, 
I find the following objections : — 

First of all, no one can believe that all of a child's speech 
is acquired by direct imitation. On many occasions the process 
is undoubtedly one of the production of many sounds, irrespec- 
tive of the model given, and the selection of the best one by 
parental reward. Any student who will try to get a child who 
is just beginning to speak, to say cat, dog and mouse and will 
record the sounds actually made by the child in the three cases, 
will find them very much alike. There will in fact be little 
that even looks like direct imitation until the child has 'learned' 
at least forty or fifty words. 

The second difficulty lies in the fact that different children, 
in even the clearest cases of the imitation of one sound, vary 
from it in so many directions. A list of all the sounds made in 
response to one sound heard is more suggestive of random 
babble as modified by various habits of duplicating sounds, 
than of a direct potency of the model. Ten children of the 
same age may, in response to 'Christmas,' say, kiss, kissus, 
krismus, mus, kim, kimus, kiruss, i-us and even totally unlike 
vocables such as hi-yi or ya-ya. 

The third difficulty is that in those features of word-sounds 
which are hard to acquire, such as the W sound, direct imita- 
tion is inadequate. The teacher has recourse to trial and 
chance success, the spoken word serving as a model to guide 
satisfaction and discomfort. In general no sound not included 
in the instinctive babble of children seems to be acquired by 
merely hearing and seeing it made. 



44 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

A fourth difficulty is that by the doctrine of direct imita- 
tion it should not be very much more than two or three times 
as hard to repeat a two- or three-syllable series as to repeat a 
single syllable. It is, in fact, enormously harder. This is, 
of course, just what is to be expected if learning a sound 
means the selection from random babbling plus previous habits. 
If, for instance, a child makes thirty monosyllabic sounds like 
pa, ga, ta, ma, pi, gi, li, mi, etc., there is, by chance, one chance 
in thirty that in response to a word or phrase he will make that 
one-syllable sound of his repertory which is most like it, but 
there is only one chance in nine hundred that he will make that 
two-syllable combination of his repertory which is most like it. 

Perhaps the advocates of imitation as an original mental 
function would admit that witnessed behavior does not origi- 
nally produce its like in any such uniform, mechanical way as 
a shock produces winking, or pain a cry. They would perhaps 
claim only a tendency or potentiality or disposition toward the 
production of similar movements or results. They would, 
that is, insist that questions (A3) and (B3) on page 41 are 
the really important questions. 

This doctrine that there is an original general potency of 
witnessed behavior to evoke its like, but only in the shape of a 
tendency to make like behavior appear a little oftener than it 
would by the laws of exercise and effect alone, is one that can 
at present be neither demonstrated nor refuted. It does not 
much matter, for if by original general imitativeness is meant 
only a dubious possibility that witnessed behavior will produce 
behavior that is occasionally somewhat more like it than would 
otherwise be expected, it is of little practical consequence. 
For even such a remnant of general original imitativeness, how- 
ever, I cannot find adequate evidence; and it has many funda- 
mental difficulties. 



IMITATION 45 

I judge, therefore, that the original attentiveness of man 
to the acts, movements, positions, sounds and facial expressions 
of other men and the original satisfyingness of the approval so 
often got by doing what other men do, which have been de- 
scribed in this Chapter, are really the tendencies or predisposi- 
tions or potentialities that do the work in question. 

THE IMITATION OF PARTICULAR FORMS OF BEHAVIOR 

There being no general original imitativeness, are there per- 
haps certain particular movements, positions, sounds and facial 
expressions the perception of which does produce their like? 

McDougall's answer is that, first, the responses involved in 
the principal instincts which he lists (i.e., flight — fear, repul- 
sion — disgust, curiosity — wonder, pugnacity — anger, self- 
abasement — subjection, self-assertion — elation, parental instinct 
— tender emotion) when made by one man, serve each as a sit- 
uation that originally provokes the same response in a spec- 
tator. 

There is something peculiarly attractive and plausible in 
this doctrine that "the instinctive behavior of one animal 
directly excites similar behavior on the part of his fellows," 
but it is doubtful whether nature has worked to so simple a 
wholesale result. The similarity of the behavior is not sure 
in any case, and seems contrary to fact in the case of the tend- 
encies of pugnacity — anger and parental instinct — tender 
emotion. 

The spectators of an infuriated man, or of two men raging 
at each other, are not thereby provoked to similar acts and 
feelings. They manifest rather 'curiosity-wonder,' forming a 
ring to stare, the world over. So with other mammals. When 
Professor McDougall wrote that "anger provokes anger" he 



'46 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

probably had in mind the fact that angry behavior of A toward 
B provokes angry behavior of B toward A. But that is irrele- 
vant to his purpose, since he surely does not wish to contend 
that A's fleeing from B makes B flee from A, that A's shrink- 
ing from B makes B shrink from A, that A's self-abasement 
before B makes B abase himself before A. 

The instinctive behavior of the mother in holding, cuddling 
and fondling does not excite similar behavior on the part of her 
fellow men and women. They need not be moved thereby to 
cuddle it, her, one another, their own babies, or anything else. 
The chief response in them may be approval, envy or mild 
amusement, as often as tender emotion of the same sort as her 
behavior expresses. The sight of a child not being tenderly 
treated is in fact probably more likely to arouse tender emotion 
in spectators than the sight of one on whom it is lavished. It 
is indeed the unloved rather than the loved or the loving who 
move the motherly spirit in the spectator. 

No one common rule for the original effect of the perception 
of instinctive behavior in another man can be given. His 
behavior in attention, cautious approach, the avoiding reactions 
and the hunting instinct, produces something much like itself. 
His behavior in anger, combat for mastery, courtship and 
parental affection produces in the spectator something as a rule 
quite unlike itself. The effect of his behavior in attempted 
mastery and submission is dubious, varying greatly with its 
concomitants and being little known in any case. Seeing a 
man in the attitude of submission may make the spectator more 
submissive or more aggressive. Whether the perception of 
instinctive behavior originally produces like behavior is a ques- 
tion to be studied separately in the case of each instinct. 

The question is often very difficult. Under present condi- 
tions children would usually learn by training to run from 



IMITATION 47 

whatever others ran from, to look at whatever others looked 
at, and the like, even if there were no original tendencies to do 
so. Moreover the object or event, the perception of which 
causes A to respond by a certain instinctive behavior which 
then spreads to B, is likely to be perceived by B also, so that 
whether his behavior is a response to A's behavior or to the 
object itself is often in doubt. For example, A's fear at a 
snake may arouse B's fear indirectly by merely calling B's 
attention to the snake. Finally A's response may, upon his 
perception of B, be modified to include certain behavior which 
acts as a special signal to provoke approach, fear, or whatever 
the response may be, in B. Thus the danger-signal might be 
given by A when frightened in company, though not when 
frightened alone; and B might respond, not to A's general 
fright, but to the danger signal. 

The most probable cases for the production, by behavior 
witnessed, of similar behavior in the witness, are smiling when 
smiled at, laughing when others laugh, yelling when others 
yell, looking at what others observe, listening when others 
listen, running with or after people who are running in the 
same direction, running from the focus whence others scatter, 
jabbering when others jabber and becoming silent as they be- 
come silent, crouching when others crouch, chasing, attacking 
and rending what others hunt, and seising whatever object 
another seises. 

In my opinion these probabilities are all, or nearly all, real, 
and are the chief, or even the only components of "the imitative 
tendency which shows itself in large masses of men, and pro- 
duces panics, and orgies, and frenzies of violence, and which 
only the rarest individuals can actively withstand." 

In the second division of his account of what particular 



48 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

acts originally provoke similar acts in the spectator, McDougall 
says : — 

"For the sake of completeness a fifth kind of imitation may 
be mentioned. It is the imitation by very young children of 
movements that are not expressive of feeling or emotion ; it is 
manifested at an age when the child cannot be credited with 
ideas of movement or with deliberate self-conscious imitation. 
A few instances of this sort have been reported by reliable 
observers; e.g., Preyer stated that his child imitated the pro- 
trusion of his lips when in the fourth month of life. These 
cases have been regarded, by those who have not themselves 
witnessed similar actions, as chance coincidences, because it is 
impossible to bring them under any recognized type of imita- 
tion. I have, however, carefully verified the occurrence of this 
sort of imitation in two of my own children; one of them on 
several occasions during his fourth month repeatedly put out 
his tongue when the person whose face he was watching made 
this movement. For the explanation of any such simple imi- 
tation of a particular movement at this early age, we have to 
assume the existence of a very simple perceptual disposition 
having this specific motor tendency, and since we cannot 
suppose such a disposition to have been acquired at this age, 
we are compelled to suppose it to be innately organized. Such 
an innate disposition would be an extremely simple rudimentary 
instinct. It may be that every child inherits a considerable 
number of such rudimentary instincts, and that they play a 
considerable part in facilitating the acquisition of new move- 
ments, especially perhaps of speech movements." ['08, p. 106] 

There may be such odds and ends of tendencies to dupli- 
cate particular acts. If so, no one knows what the acts are. 
So far, the list begins and ends unimpressively with sticking 
out the tongue ! 

On the whole, the imitative tendencies which pervade 
human life and which are among the most powerful forces 
with and against which education and social reform work, 



IMITATION 49 

are, for the most part, not original tendencies to respond to 
behavior seen by duplicating it in the same mechanical way 
that one responds to light by contracting the pupil, but must be 
explained as the results of the arousal, by the behavior of other 
men, of either special instinctive responses or ideas and im- 
pulses which have formed, in the course of experience, con- 
nections with that sort of behavior. Man has a few specialized 
original tendencies whose responses are for him to do what the 
man forming the situation does. His other tendencies to 
imitate are habits learned nowise differently from other habits. 



chapter iv 
Original Satisfiers and Annoyers 
the original nature of wants, interests and motives 

Reason finds the aim of human life the improvement and 
satisfaction of wants. By reducing those to which the nature 
of things and men denies satisfaction, or by increasing those 
which can be fulfilled without injuring the fate of others, man 
makes his wants better. By changing the environment into a 
nature more hospitable to the activities he craves, he satisfies 
them. The sciences and arts arose by the impetus of wants, 
and continue in their service. They are the ultimate source 
of all values. 

The original basis of the wants which so truly do and should 
rule the world is the original satisfyingness of some states of 
affairs and annoyingness of others. Out of such original sat- 
isfiers and annoyers grow all desires and aversions ; and in such 
are found the first guides of learning. 

By a satisfying state of affairs is meant roughly pne which 
the animal does nothing to avoid, often doing such things as 
attain and preserve it. By an annoying state of affairs is 
meant roughly one which the animal avoids or changes. 

Samples of original satisfiers or instinctive likes are: — 
To be with other human beings rather than alone, To be with 
familiar human beings rather than with strange ones. To move 
when refreshed, To rest when tired, To be "not altogether un- 
enclosed" when resting and at night. 

Samples of original annoyers or instinctive aversions are: 
■ — Bitter substances in the mouth, Being checked in locomotion 

50 



SATISFIERS AND ANNOYERS 5'I 

by an obstacle, Being hungry, Being looked at with scorn by 
other men, The sight and smell of ce excrementitious and putrid 
things, blood, pus, entrails." 

To satisfy is not the same as to give sensory pleasure and 
to annoy is not the same as to give pain. The latter confusion 
is specially misleading, for pain is only one of many annoyers, 
and does not inevitably annoy. Being gently held when one 
wants to fight, tho not painful, is exceedingly annoying. A 
mother may welcome the pain she suffers for her child. With 
pleasure the case is somewhat different. If by it is meant 
simply the felt tolerability and welcomeness of a state of affairs, 
pleasure is a close symptom — almost a synonym — of satisfy- 
ingness. But the pleasurableness of certain sensations as com- 
monly described in psychological treatises is a very partial 
symptom. Thus a sweet taste may be annoying and a bitter 
taste welcomed. 

A long list could be made of such states of affairs as feed- 
ing when hungry, rest when weary, being cuddled when sleepy, 
running after an animal that arouses hunting behavior, getting 
nearer to it in the course of the running, jumping upon it when 
near, seizing it after the jump, subduing it after seizing it, 
holding a baby after giving birth to one, having it smile when 
held, cooing to it when it smiles. Such a list, however, can be 
replaced by one law which any of its items would exemplify, — 
that when any original behavior-series is started and operates 
successfully, its activities are satisfying and the situations 
which they produce are satisfying. The absence of food when 
hungry, being held so that one cannot chase the passing rab- 
bit, being out-distanced by it, clutching the air instead of the 
prey at which one leaps, having the offered toy withdrawn as 
one reaches for it, immovability in the obstacle one pushes, are 
samples from a similar long list of original annoyers, all of the 



52 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

class described by the law that when any original behavior- 
series is started, any failure of it to operate successfully is 
annoying. For these laws to be adequate to guide theory and 
practice, however, the word 'successfully' must be defined 
objectively. 

Successful operation cannot be defined adequately in terms 
of gross behavior without returning in a larger or shorter 
circle to satisfyingness itself. To say that successful means 
the 'normal' action and 'normal' consequences of instinctive 
behavior leaves us with 'normal' to define, and in the end it will 
be defined back again as the successful or satisfying. To say 
that 'successful' means what furthers the life-processes of the 
animal leaves on our hands as exceptions such cases as the 
sacrifice of the mother's own life-processes to those of the 
child on the one hand, and such cases as rest rather than motion 
when freezing and intemperance of all sorts, on the other. 

To replace the life-processes of the individual by the per- 
petuation of the species cuts out some of these exceptions, but 
adds others. Victory is satisfying, though gained by accident 
or numbers ; bullying is satisfying, though due to qualities that 
weaken the species. 

To say that successful means 'unimpeded' or 'unthwarted' 
or 'uninterfered with' tells fairly well what movements will be 
satisfying, since for a movement to be impeded is for it to fail 
as a movement. But to say that to fail to clutch the prey, 
clutching the air instead, is to be impeded or thwarted or inter- 
fered with is simply to say that an annoying situation is pro- 
duced. It is true that mere freedom to complete the motions 
to which original nature impels in a given situation is satisfying, 
but the majority of original satisfiers involves also the produc- 
tion by the movement of some one effect rather than another. 
To run when nature so moves is satisfying, but to get from 



SATISFIERS AND ANNOYERS 53 

this place, or to that place, or nearer that animal, or ahead of 
this man, is commonly the larger satisfier in instinctive re- 
sponses of flight and pursuit. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF READINESS 

Successful operation can in fact be satisfactorily defined, 
and what will originally satisfy and annoy can be safely pre- 
dicted, only as a characteristic of the internal behavior of the 
neurones. By original nature a certain situation starts a 
behavior-series : this involves not only actual conduction along 
certain neurones and across certain synapses, but also the read- 
iness of others to conduct. The sight of the prey makes the 
animal run after it, and also puts the conductions and connec- 
tions involved in jumping upon it when near into a state of 
excitability or readiness to be made. Even the neurone-con- 
nections involved in the response of 'clutching' to the situation 
of 'jumping and reaching it' and those involved in triumphing 
over it and rending it or taking it to one's lair are in a differ- 
ent condition when a chase is started than they otherwise are. 
The activities of the neurones which cause behavior are by 
original nature often arranged in long series involving all 
degrees of preparedness for connection-making on the part of 
some as well as actual connection-making on the part of others. 
When a child sees an attractive object at a distance, his neu- 
rones may be said to prophetically prepare for the whole series 
of fixating it with the eyes, running toward it, seeing it within 
reach, grasping, feeling it in his hand, and curiously manipu- 
lating it. 

The fact is that it is the neurones, not the body as a whole, 
whose life processes are primarily concerned in the 'successful' 
operation of a behavior-series. By 'normal' or 'successful' 



54 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

operation we mean the externally observable signs of the action 
of neurones that are ready to act. And by the failure, or 
thwarting, of an original tendency we mean the observable 
signs of failure to conduct and connect in neurones which are 
ready to so act. Such satisfying states of affairs as those listed 
at the beginning of this chapter are states of affairs which 
stimulate, or at least permit, the action of neural connections 
and neural conductions that are in readiness to act; and the 
annoying states of affairs listed prevent such from acting. 

The essential satisfyingness in these cases is then the con- 
duction along neurones and across synapses that are ready for 
conduction and the essential annoyingness in these cases is the 
absence of such conduction. 

Now this law holds good not only in the case of such 
definite behavior-series as feeding, hunting, fighting or sex- 
indulgence, but throughout behavior. Call the neurone, neu- 
rones, synapse, synapses, part of a neurone, part of a synapse, 
parts of neurones or parts of synapses — whatever makes up 
the path which is ready for conduction — a conduction unit. 
Then for a conduction unit ready to conduct to do so is satis- 
fying, and for it not to do so is annoying. 

Along with this concept of readiness to conduct, the oppo- 
site fact of unreadiness or refractoriness must be considered. 
If, as I believe, any conduction unit may be in a condition of 
repugnance to conduction in the sense that its own activities 
at the time make it less excitable by stimuli to conduction than 
is the case with the average condition of the average conduction 
unit, and if the law of readiness is true, we should expect as a 
law of unreadiness that for a conduction unit unready to con* 
duct to be forced to conduct would be annoying * 

*It is probably also the case that for a conduction unit that is unready 
for conduction not to conduct is satisfying; but evidence is so slight upon 



SATISFIERS AND ANNOYERS 55 

This seems to be the case. Unreadiness to conduct, if such 
a thing existed, would be expected, as a result of long exercise 
of conduction across a fatiguable synapse and as a result of 
weakening of the conduction unit by disease. For, in either 
case, the common response of protoplasm would be to protect 
itself against less remunerative action in favor of feeding and 
rest. Little is known of conduction units, their exhaustion 
or their diseases, but that little seems to show that conduction , 
along an exhausted or diseased conduction unit is annoying. 
In neurasthenia and in so-called psychasthenic, activities of the 
nervous system which in health are satisfying or indifferent 
become annoying. When, on the other hand, the nervous sys- 
tem is in fine fettle from health and abundant sleep, activities 
which on the average are slightly distasteful, are welcomed. 

I believe that the original tendencies of man to be satisfied 
and to be annoyed — to welcome and reject — are described by 
these three laws of readiness and unreadiness : — ( i ) that when 
a conduction unit is ready to conduct, conduction by it is satis- 
fying, nothing being done to alter its action, (2) that for a 
conduction unit ready to conduct not to conduct is annoying, 
and provokes whatever responses nature provides in connection 
with that particular annoying lack; (3) that when a conduction 
unit unready for conduction is forced to conduct, conduction 
by it is annoying. 

Ordinarily, then, any situation not only produces full action 
in certain conduction units, but also predisposes other units 
further on in the chain toward or against conduction. Thus 

this complementary hypothesis that it will not be discussed here. It 
is a question whether the positive satisfyingness of rest for a function 
after its exercise, of peace after worry, of safety after fear, and the like 
is due to relief from conduction for unready conduction-units or to the 
actual conduction of ready units concerned in sensing bodily languor, 
gentle speech, familiar faces and the like. 



56 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

the mechanism of even so simple a behavior-series as fixating 
a bright light, chasing a rabbit, or seizing and eating a berry is 
extremely complex. Such a complexity of excitants, checks 
and releases, as well as straightforward connections, is, how- 
ever, exactly what human behavior requires and what the 
physiology of the neurones suggests. We have, therefore, the 
problem of deciding what original tendencies are found or put 
in readiness and unreadiness, by any given situation, as well 
as what bonds are aroused to immediate and total action by it. 
The detailed solution of this problem for each important 
situation I shall not attempt. In listing the readinesses and 
unreadinesses which different situations produce or call into 
play, psychology can at present make little advance beyond 
what any shrewd observer can see for himself once he under- 
stands the general principles. If each behavior-series is 
thought of as an army sending scouts ahead, or as a train whose 
arrival at any one station means the sending of signals on be- 
fore whereby this switch is opened, that one closed, and the 
other left dependent on the size or speed or color of the train, 
— if the sight of a small object in indirect vision is realized as 
a cause of remote readinesses of the neurones connected with 
the fovea, the neurones concerned in reaching and grasping, 
even possibly of the neurones concerned in tasting, — enough 
has been accomplished for our purpose. To discover the exact 
nature of such readinesses is one of the notable tasks of the 
sciences of human behavior. 

the explanation of 'multiple response' or 
Varied reaction' 

One further general fact with - espect to original annoyers 
and satisfiers requires mention. The details of very many of 



SATISFIERS AND ANNOYERS 57 

the forms of original behavior which have been and will be 
listed in this inventory involve varied response to an annoying 
state of affairs until a certain satisfying condition is attained. 
That is, the situation provokes, not one fixed response, but any 
one of several responses, the failure on the part of the one first 
made to produce a satisfying state of affairs being (in connec- 
tion with the rest of the situation) the stimulus to one of the 
other responses, so that the animal does many things and does 
them over and over again until some one of them, or some 
external event, puts an end to the annoying state of affairs or 
brings the requisite satisfaction. Thus, in responding to an 
attractive object seen, a variety of reaching movements may be 
made until the contact with the object ends the series. The 
contact then sets off a variety of grasping movements until the 
satisfying clutch of the object ends the series. The clasping 
of the object may then in turn set off a variety of retractions 
and flexions until the presence of the object in the mouth 
quiets these new cravings. Similarly, the situation 'being 
held' when the neurones concerned in running about are 
ready to act, provokes a variety of wrigglings, stiffenings, 
pushings and the like. The failure of any one of these to 
relieve the annoying confinement leads (in connection with the 
rest of the original situation) to a more energetic or different 
movement, the series being terminated when some one of the 
varied reactions ends the annoyance by securing escape. The 
process is easily observable in the behavior of the lower animals. 
A kitten which is utterly devoid of any acquired habits of re- 
sponse to the situation 'being confined alone in a small cage, 
when hungry, with food outside,' will respond to that situation 
quite instinctively as follows. "It tries to squeeze through any 
openings; it claws and bites at the bars or wire; it thrusts its 
paws out through any opening and claws at everything it 



58 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

reaches; it continues its efforts when it strikes anything loose 
and shaky ; it may claw at things within the box. It does not 
pay very much attention to the food outside, but seems simply 
to strive instinctively to escape from confinement. The vigor 
with which it struggles is extraordinary. For eight or ten 
minutes it will claw and bite and squeeze incessantly." 

The importance of the original tendencies whereby the 
annoyingness of a certain state of affairs causes a series of 
varied movements until the required satisfier is produced* is 
very great, not only because of their number and frequent 
action, but also because of their very easy modification into 
special habits by the selection of the 'successful' response and 
its association with the situation. Variation is the first requi- 
site for progress in the behavior of an individual as it is in the 
development of the race. 

*Or until the animal is distracted from the situation, as by fatigue, 
sleep, or new sensory appeals. 



chapter v 

Tendencies to Minor Bodily Movements and Cerebral 
Connections 

vocalization, visual exploration and manipulation 

A little child, apart from training, makes all sorts of 
movements of the vocal cords and mouth-parts resulting in 
cooings, babblings, yellings, squealings and squawkings of great 
variety. He moves his eyes so as to bring different parts of any 
object which attracts visual attentiveness upon the fovea. He 
pulls, pokes, turns, picks up, drops, shoves, rolls, scratches, 
waves, and otherwise manipulates an object that permits it. 

This behavior is characterized, at least to superficial ob- 
servation, by aimlessness, ubiquity, and indiscriminateness. 
Ttie movements seem to do nothing for the animal, to be made 
to any one situation (of a certain class) as well as to another, 
and to be made hit-or-miss in any order. Vocal play seems to 
occur with no ulterior consequence. Any stimulus from with- 
out or within, which does not connect with some antagonistic 
vocal activity, seems to evoke it. One sound or another, one 
sequence of sounds or another, seems to occur indifferently. 
So, also, the manipulation of objects under consideration seems 
quite without an ulterior end such as the 'reach-grasp-put in 
mouth' responses display. It seems to be a response to any 
object that permits it; and turning, poking, scratching seem to 
occur as fortuitous emergences from a set of indifferent re- 
sponses. A general tendency to aimless exercise of the neu- 
rones controlling the movements of the eyes, vocal apparatus and 
free forelimbs seems thus a just description of the tendency. 

59 



6o 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 



For a rough and elementary description it is just. But a 
more critical consideration of the behavior will show that it is 
conformable to the general type of a connection of a definite 
response with a definite situation, ' perpetuated in inheritance 
by its utility. 

All original tendencies are aimless in the sense that fore- 
sight of the consequences does not effect the response. The 
animal does not originally run from a tiger because he intends 
to get away. He runs because of the tiger and because run- 
ning in that situation is a satisfier to his neurones. He equally 
fingers the block because it is what it is and because fingering 
it satisfies him. As to the aim seen ab extra, the end as gained 
rather than as foreseen, no instincts have surer utility than the 
apparently objectless voice-, eye-, and finger L play. For the 
end of voice-play is language; the end of eye- and finger-play 
is knowledge. In the long run, the apparently random voice- 
play is more useful to the species than the specific calls of hun- 
ger, pain, fright, protection and wooing; and the puttering 
with eyes and fingers is more useful than the movements of 
flight, pursuit, attack, capture and eating. What might ap- 
pear to be perverse luxuries in the business of keeping one's 
self and one's offspring alive, turn out to be, in connection 
with certain other tendencies, means of exterminating all ene- 
mies, securing food in regular abundance, and remaking the 
environment to suit man's almost indefinite multiplication. 

The definiteness of the situations and responses would be 
revealed if observation could include what goes on in the nerv- 
ous system as well as in more external behavior. The appar- 
ent identity of the response to different things (as when a child 
prattles alike to his mother, his doll, and the sky), and the ap- 
parent indiscriminateness of the selection from poking, pull- 
ing, scratching, and so on in response to apparently the same 



MINOR MOVEMENTS AND CONNECTIONS 6l 

thing, would then be seen to be illusions. The inner action of 
nutrition, fatigue and growth plays here a larger part in de- 
ciding which of the many possible movements shall be made, 
than it does in the case of flight or fighting, and so justifies the 
rough usage of the term 'multiple response to the same situa- 
tion/ The situation, too, may be, in addition to the proper in- 
ner conditions in the neurones, so general as 'anything that con- 
trasts with the rest of the visual field' or 'anything touching 
the palm of the hand' or even simply 'being alive, awake and 
with one's vocal apparatus not otherwise engaged.' 

Vocalization, visual exploration and manipulation are then 
to be described as general tendencies to random exercise of 
the neurones concerned in making many sounds, many eye 
movements and many manual experiments only if we mean by 
general and random this particular generality and randomness. 
When Spencer and others speak of 'excess' movements or the 
'overflow of nerve energy' into 'all sorts of movements or the 
'chance' action of the muscles of speech, facial expression, ges- 
ture and manual play, they are not describing the facts of 
early motor play accurately. These movements are in excess 
of those needed for eating, fighting and the like, but they are 
as grounded in fundamental tendencies of the organism as the 
latter. It is not that the nerve energy of man (and in some 
measure of the monkeys) over-Hows as that of fishes and many 
mammals does not, but that it flows into some hundreds of 
channels productive of movements of the vocal cords, mouth- 
parts, facial muscles, eyes and hands, as it does not in a fish or 
mammal. The actions are 'chance' ones only in the sense that 
observation of the external situation alone can not predict them 
nearly so well as it can the actions of eating, flight or attack. 
They do not even seem to be perfectly random. We can at least 
predict that an infant will say 'ah goo' at an earlier age than 



62 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

he will say '1 da/ that he will pat an object far aftener than he 
will place his little finger on it, and many other facts of the 
same sort. We can predict with very great surety that a child 
will not roll his eyes independently at a toy or grasp it with 
his thumb and ring-finger. The randomness is, in any case, 
limited to the choice from among certain responses which, as 
a total group, are thoroughly defined. 

Lest this somewhat subtle discussion of the more exact de- 
scription of these tendencies distract attention from the sheer 
external behavior, I repeat that vocalization means, roughly, 
the responding by many different sounds in many different se- 
quences to many different external situations, and that from it 
develop, under training, speech, song and other vocal arts. 
Visual exploration means, roughly, responding by many eye 
movements so as to bring various parts of an object upon the 
spot of clearest vision, and from it develops much in our per- 
ceptions of 'things,' our habits of purposive examination, read- 
ing and the like. Manipulation means, roughly, responding 
by many different arm, hand and finger movements to many 
different objects, and gives the possibility of the habits of using 
tools, writing, drawing, and the bulk of modern skilled 
occupations. 

OTHER POSSIBLE SPECIALIZATIONS 

Constnictiveness. — In the ordinary descriptions of original 
tendencies by the consequences to which they lead, 'destructive- 
ness' and 'constructiveness' occupy prominent places. This 
apparent contradiction is due simply to the impropriety of de- 
scribing a tendency by its consequences instead of by the actual 
situation and response. Original nature knows nothing of 
destroying or creating — of changing an object into a status 
less or more profitable to the welfare of the world in general. 



CURIOSITY AND MENTAL CONTROL 63 

Its tendency is simply to manipulate objects in the fashion 
that has just been described. With this go the satisfactions 
of doing something rather than nothing, of getting a more 
varied and novel series of impressions, and of having acts pro- 
duce perceptible changes, which are taken account of under the 
proper instinctive interests. Waving of arms and legs, kick- 
ing and rolling, grimacing, prattling, dropping toys, blowing 
whistles, tearing books, digging holes in the sand, and build- 
ing with blocks are all of the same pattern. No one would 
think it proper to speak of instincts of constructing and de- 
stroying the air in the sense of making words and making 
senseless jabber. One word, vocalization, is wisely used to 
describe the tendency to make babbling movements. So one 
word, manipulation, may replace constructiveness and destruc- 
tiveness to signify the tendency to make certain hand, arm and 
finger movements. 

Adornment and Art. — Kirkpatrick and others think that 
there is an original specific tendency to adorn one's body. But 
it seems more probable that painting, tattooing, decoration with 
shells, flowers, clothes, feathers and the like are all learned 
responses selected by their value in connection with gaining no- 
tice, approval, mastery, and success in courtship. 

The originality of a specific tendency to make beautiful 
objects may also be doubted. Constructiveness of all sorts 
seems to be the result of experience acting on general manipula- 
tive play. Habits of making admired, rather than unnoticed 
or disliked, objects would easily be selected for survival. 

Curiosity. — Curiosity is a term which we use vaguely 
for tendencies whose result is to give knowledge. Many of 
these exist in man as gifts of nature. Attention to novel 
objects and human behavior, cautious approach, following 
with the eyes, reaching, grasping, putting in the mouth, tast- 



64 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

ing, visual exploration, and manipulation thus make up a 
large part of 'curiosity.' Such of these as need description 
have been already described. 

The element not hitherto listed may best be named the love 
of sensory life for its own sake. Merely to have sensations is, 
other things being equal, satisfying to man. Mental emptiness 
is one of his great annoyers. We may justly picture the 
brain of man as containing many neurones, in connection with 
the sensory neurones, which crave stimulation — are in "readi- 
ness to conduct" — though no immediate gratification of any 
more practical want follows their action. Man wants sense 
impressions for sensation's sake. Novel experiences are to 
him their own sufficient reward. It is because they satisfy 
this want as well as because of their intrinsic satisfyingness, 
that visual exploration and manipulation are the almost inces- 
sant occupations of our waking infancy. 

The Instinct of Multiform Mental Activity. — The hypoth- 
esis that man's brain contains many neurones in 'readiness to 
act' besides those whose action is concerned in the behavior- 
series of the specific instincts must, I think, be carried further. 
There are not only neurones ready to be set in action by direct 
stimuli from the sense-organs, but also neurones ready to be 
set in action by more remote or secondary connections. For 
example, a baby likes not only to see a pile of blocks tumble 
or a wheel go around, but also to find the blocks tumbling 
when he hits them, or the wheel revolving when he pushes a 
spring. Satisfactions of the second sort are, indeed, if any- 
thing the more potent. Merely hearing the toot of a horn is 
a feeble joy compared to blowing it. Now 'tumbling when I 
hit them,' 'whirling when I push,' and 'tooting when I blow' are 
samples of secondary connections, a step removed from mere 
sensations. They represent the action of the neurones con- 



CURIOSITY AND MENTAL CONTROL 65 

cerned in the child's manipulations, those concerned in his sen- 
sations and those concerned in connecting the latter with the 
former. They possess the satisfyingness of manipulation, of the 
love of sensory life per se, and something more, which, for lack 
of a better name, I shall call the satisfyingness of mental control. 
To do something and have something happen as the conse- 
quence is, other things being equal, instinctively satisfying, 
whatever be done and whatever be the consequent happening.* 

Now mental control, or doing something and having some- 
thing happen, is satisfying in very many concrete forms. Not 
only making movements and thereby getting sensations, but 
also making an ideal plan and thereby getting a conclusion, 
making an imaginary person and thereby getting further imag- 
inations of how he would act, and countless other 'gettings from 
doings,' are satisfying. They are originally satisfying since, as 
soon as training gives the ability to make the plan or image 
and get the result, nature gives satisfyingness to the connec- 
tion.f 

Mental activity is then, other things being equal, satisfying 
almost or quite in general. The neurones concerned in the 
special instincts are not the only ones in readiness to act. 
Neurones are roused to action in the course of learning which 
also were ready to act and whose action therefore is satisfying. 
It is as instinctive or 'natural' for certain men to enjoy the un- 

*This is, I judge, the fact which Groos and others have in mind, 
or should have in mind, when they speak of man's instinct of 'pleasure at 
being a cause/ or of 'experimentation.' A typical illustration of the earlier 
appearances of such behavior is the following from Shinn ['99, p. 10] : 
"In the twentieth month she would often cover her eyes with her hands 
and take them away; hide her face in a cushion, or on her own arms, 
often saying, 'Dark,' then look up,— 'Light now.' " 

t The 'other things being equal' is of course implied throughout. Mak- 
ing a connection that has to be made against strong cravings to rest or to 
do something else may be very annoying. 
5 



66 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

forced exercise of thought and skill as to enjoy food, sleep, 
companionship, approval or conquest. 

The Instinct of Multiform Physical Activity. — A similar line 
of observation and reasoning justifies the conclusion that, other 
things being equal, many unforced movements besides those 
specifically made in response to food to be got, foes to be sub- 
dued and the like, are originally satisfying. It is as instinctive 
for the baby to curl it's toes, wave its arms and wriggle its head 
as to suckle. The boy instinctively enjoys a gymnasium as well 
as chasing cats. The grasping, chasing, wrestling and pulling 
in response to the real situation of the hunt doubtless have a 
richer zest than the club-swinging or fancy tumbling done, as 
it were, in a biological vacuum, but what satisfaction these 
latter do give may be instinctive. After long rest almost any 
unforced movement is more satisfying to the child than further 
inaction would be. 

PLAY 

No doubt much of the behavior called play represents orig- 
inal bonds between certain situations and certain responses. 
Play, in any one of the common meanings of the word, is more 
original, less a product of training, than the occupations which 
are distinguished as work. But, as has repeatedly been the 
case with other tendencies, the vague assumption of a tendency 
to manifest, apart from training, more or less of the behavior 
called play, needs specification. The majority of the disputes 
about the service of play in education hark back to vagueness 
in defining what play is to be taken to mean; and in deciding 
which elements in it are original and which are learned. It 
is therefore well to remind oneself first of all of what the orig- 
inal tendencies to play are not. 

There is no original tendency to act uselessly rather than 



PLAY 67 

usefully, or to make-believe rather than to accept matters of 
fact. ) Nor is there a full set of tendencies to mock in a sportive 
way all the separate behavior-series of feeding, hunting, seeking 
shelter, running away, and so on which have been listed in 
this and the previous chapters. Man has not two original na- 
tures — one matter of fact, the other playful, — from one to 
the other of which he shifts by inner magic. 

The majority of the original tendencies from which human 
play develops are not peculiar to play, but originate serious 
activities as well. Such are manipulation, facial expression, 
vocalization, multiform mental activity and multiform physical 
activity. The same original tendency, manipulation, is the root 
of making mud-pies and apple-pies. Vocalization produces 
matter-of-fact, utilitarian speech and playful screams or songs. 
To explain the greater part of original play, no additions what- 
ever to the account of original nature so far given are needed. 

Another fraction of original play is accounted for by the 
fact that original tendencies, which I have so far described 
for convenience as if they manifested themselves in distinct 
unitary situation-response series, do not in life come thus neatly 
separated. Any situation in life may be enormously compli- 
cated, so that a mixture from responses of, say, curiosity, hunt- 
ing, kindliness, and manipulation may be its result. A two-, 
year-old child may be to a six-year-old child, at one and the 
same time, a novelty, a small object passing him, a fellow-man, 
and a stimulus to secondary connections, and so may be stared 
at, run after, patted and felt of. So the six-year-old may not 
hunt and subdue, nor feed and protect, but, as we say, 'play with' 
the baby. Any situation in life may be only a fragment — in 
the artificial life of civilization, a mutilation — of any of the 
total situations to which original nature is previously adapted. 
Consequently, it may produce only a fragment of the response 



68 ^ THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

which the total situation would have produced. A dig in the 
ribs, unpreceded by threatening approach and unaccompanied by 
projected head, angry face, growling and snarls, must call forth 
a different response from that which it would call forth if with 
these accompaniments. 

In a similar way the 'mutilation' of the conditions within 
the organism may give to a tendency an appearance of being 
playful beyond its deserts. If infants from a year to three 
years of age lived in such a community as a human settlement 
seems likely to have been twenty-five thousand years ago, their 
restless examination of small objects would perhaps seem as 
utilitarian as their father's hunting. 

There are left, as possible instincts of play proper, not 
already listed, the special tendencies to hunt for hunting's sake 
in ways notably different from the 'real' hunt; to fight for 
fighting's sake in ways notably different from the Veal' fight; 
to fondle and pet in ways notably different from the 'real' 
mothering. It may be, that is, that in these cases nature pro-, 
vides preparation for food-getting, for the struggle for females 
and for motherhood by connecting special play-responses in 
early life to situations like, though not identical with, those 
to be met in earnest. Whether the chasing, fleeing, catching, 
wrestling, jumping upon domestic animals and other children, 
fisticuffs, hair-pulling, and the like, and the holding, fondling 
and petting babies, dolls, pets and toys, by the young, require 
such special instincts or are explainable as the 'real' instincts, 
modified by complication or distortion of the situations and by 
training, I shall not try to decide. In any case, in playful 
hunting, fighting, mothering, fleeing, home-making and the 
like, training early permeates and overlays man's original 
nature. 



chapter vi 
The Capacity to Learn 

Our inventory so far has not included the original tenden- 
cies of the original tendencies themselves — the original tenden- 
cies not to this or that particular sensitivity, bond or power of 
response, but of sensitivities, connections and responses, in 
general. Thus, it is a fact of original nature that being im- 
pressed by this, that and the other situation and making this, 
that and the other connection occupies time, may produce the 
inner life which a man has as his consciousness, and may leave 
an effect upon the man's nature long after the situation and 
response of that time are ended. It is a fact of original na- 
ture that certain states of affairs are satisfying to a man's 
neurones — are such as they do nothing to avoid, whereas other 
states of affairs are annoying to the neurones — stimulate them 
to do something until the annoying state of affairs gives way 
to a satisfying one which they do nothing to avoid. That 
is, reflexes, instincts and capacities (i) always take place in 
time, (2) sometimes produce or modify the inner conscious 
life of the animal whose they are, and (3) sometimes change 
the organism more or less permanently. The neurones which 
are concerned in them have roughly the original tendency (4) to 
do nothing different when their life processes are being facili- 
tated and to make whatever changes are in their repertory when 
their life processes are disturbed. 

The first and second of these general tendencies everyone 
properly takes for granted. No more need be said of them. 

The third fact noted above refers to the capacity for perma- 

69 



yo THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

nent modifiability or 'learning,' which is, from the point of 
view of man's welfare, the most important fact in nature. 

THE LAWS OF LEARNING 

The Law of Use. — To the situation, 'a modifiable connec- 
tion being made by him between a situation S and a response 
R,' man responds originally, other things being equal, by an 
increase in the strength of that connection. By the strength of 
a connection is meant roughly the probability that it will be 
made when the situation recurs. Greater probability that a 
connection will be made means a greater probability for the 
same time, or an equal probability but for a longer time.* 
Thus, strengthening the connection between 'being asked how 
many six and seven are' and 'saying "thirteen," ' may mean 
that the probability of that response during the next six days 
is eight out of ten instead of seven out of ten, or that the 
probability is seven out of ten for sixty days instead of for 
forty. 

The Law of Disuse. — To the situation, 'a modifiable con- 
nection not being made by him between a situation S and a 
response R, during a length of time T,' man responds origin- 
ally, other things being equal, by a decrease in the strength of 
that connection. 

The tendencies of use and disuse may be listed together 
under one name as the Law of Exercise. 

As corollaries of the law of use we have the facts that the 
degree of strengthening of a connection will depend upon the 
vigor and duration as well as the frequency of its making. To 
think '6+7=13' attentively and for ten seconds will thus in- 

*Certain additions and qualifications are necessary to make this defini- 
tion adequate, but it will serve provisionally. 



THE CAPACITY TO LEARN 71 

crease the strength of its bond more than to think of it lightly 
and for only half a second. 

The Law of Effect. — To the situation, 'a modifiable connec- 
tion being made by him between an S and an R and being 
accompanied or followed by a satisfying state of affairs' man 
responds, other things being equal, by an increase in the 
strength of that connection. To a connection similar, save that 
an annoying state of affairs goes with or follows it, man re- 
sponds, other things being equal, by a decrease in the strength 
of the connection. 

As a corollary to the law of effect we have the fact that 
the strengthening effect of satisfyingness varies with its inti- 
macy with the bond in question as well as with the degree of 
satisfyingness. Such intimacy, or closeness of connection be- 
tween the satisfying state of affairs and the bond it affects, 
may be due to close temporal sequence or to attentiveness to 
the situation and response. Other things being equal, the 
same degree of satisfyingness will act more strongly on a bond 
made two seconds previously than on one made two minutes 
previously,— more strongly on a bond between a situation and 
a response attended to closely than on a bond equally remote 
in time in an unnoticed series. 

These tendencies for connections to grow strong by exer- 
cise and satisfying consequences and to grow weak by disuse 
and annoying consequences should, if importance were the 
measure of the space to be allotted to topics, preempt at least 
half of this inventory. As the features of man's original 
equipment whereby all the rest of that equipment is modified 
for use in a complex civilized world, they are of universal im- 
portance in education. They are the effective original forces 
in what has variously been called nurture, training, learning 
by experience, or intelligence. 



72 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Since, however, they are so clear and straightforward, they 
need no comment at this point* save this reminder of their im- 
portance, a statement of which connections are modifiable, and 
a defense of them against certain wrong accounts of the orig- 
inal tendencies to strengthen and weaken bonds in behavior. 

LIMITATIONS TO MODIFIABILITY 

Which connections are modifiable is not known with abso- 
lute surety and precision. At one extreme are connections, 
such as that between 'being supported by only the air' and 
'falling toward the centre of the earth,' which are utterly un- 
modifiable. At the other extreme are connections, such as that 
between the situation just mentioned and 'screaming,' which 
are obviously modifiable. One will always tend to fall but he 
may learn not to tend to scream. 

The doubtful cases are the connections found in reflexes 
like the contraction of the pupil to brighter light, or sneezing 
at certain irritations of the mucous membrane of the nose, and 
in the still more purely physiological behavior of circulation, 
digestion, metabolism and the like. It is chiefly in hygiene and 
medicine that doubt arises whether a certain change can or 
cannot be regulated by use, disuse, satisfyingness and dis- 
comfort. 

THE SUPPOSED FORMATION OF CONNECTIONS BY 'FACULTIES* 

There are three current opinions concerning the original 
capacities of man to learn, that is, to strengthen and weaken 

*Since these original tendencies for use and satisfying consequences 
to strengthen connections, and for disuse and annoyingness to weaken 
them, are the efficient forces in learning, they will be discussed again in 
the second division of this treatise from the point of view of an inquiry 
into man's acquired tendencies or the results of learning. 



THE CAPACITY TO LEARN 73 

bonds in behavior, which seem contrary to fact. First is the 
opinion that attention, memory, reasoning, choice and the like 
are mystical powers given to man as his birthright which 
weight the dice in favor of thinking or doing one thing rather 
than another, however the laws of instinct, exercise and effect 
make the throw. This opinion is vanishing from the world of 
expert thought and no more need be said about it than that it 
is false and would be useless to human welfare if true. 

THE SUPPOSED FORMATION OF CONNECTIONS BY THE PERCEP- 
TION OF THEIR ACTION IN ANOTHER 

The second opinion is that for a man to perceive an S-R* 
sequence in another man's behavior in and of itself predis- 
poses him to respond to that S by that R — that imitation exists 
as a force whereby the perception of R, in connection with S, 
in another man's behavior creates a bond between R and S in 
the perceiving individual. Of this I can find no evidence. 

It is, of course, the case that imitation of a certain sort is 
potent in man's learning. First, certain behavior of other 
men, as has been shown, stirs the percipient to the same be- 
havior. Smiling at a smile, following a leader, and being 
pleased at another's pleasure are, like most instincts, educative 
in their limited sphere. In the second place, the behavior of 
other men again and again provides models which decide, in 
whole or in part, the satisfyingness of one's own responses, and 
so are accessories in the action of the law of effect. But this 
is not the imitation required by the opinion in question. The 
enunciation or gesture of another man, acting as a model, 
forms one's habits of speech or manners in just the same way 
that the physical properties of trees .form one's habits of 
climbing. 

* 'S' here and later stands for 'Situation' ; 'R' stands for 'Response'. 



74 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

In the third place, the behavior of other men may, as a 
child's intellect develops, suggest to him all sorts of ideas; 
these ideas may lead to acts by the laws of exercise and effect ; 
these acts may often be like those which gave the suggestion. 
Thus seeing someone taking a drink of water may suggest 
awareness of my own thirst, or the fact that I shall not again 
have an opportunity to get water during the afternoon, or 
the mere thought of getting a drink. Any one of these 
thoughts has strong connections by previous habit with the re- 
sponse of getting a drink. The behavior of others is a very 
important provider of situations to which habit has bound re- 
sponses like the behavior seen. But the binding force is habit 
—that is, the laws of exercise and effect — -not imitation in 
the sense required by the theory in question. 

For the sheer direct potency of an S-R connection wit- 
nessed to reproduce itself in the witness, the evidence alleged 
is that from infant life referred to on pages 41-48 (which 
we found, shrank to the pitiable mystery of one or two babies 
sticking out their tongues) and that from men in mobs who 
are supposed to display this sheer direct modifiability by imita- 
tion because they act against habit and their own essential 
desires. It is beyond the scope of this book to explain mob- 
psychology, but a recital of the details in such cases would, I 
think, show that fleeing, attacking, pouncing on and rending, 
and other wholes or fragments of instinctive cooperative activi- 
ties, were all that happened supposedly as a consequence of 
imitation. Such would happen by reason of specific original 
bonds with the specific situations, irrespective of any general 
imitative tendency, if acquired restraints were dissipated by 
excitement, temporary monomania or the suggestions of a 
magnetic leader. 

There is then no more evidence for thoroughgoing imita- 



THE CAPACITY TO LEARN 75 

tion as a general capacity for learning than we found for it as a 
general instinctive response to the behavior of other men. The 
two senses would indeed be the same, and the facts noted here 
and in Chapter III could as well have been combined in one 
contra-argument. 

THE SUPPOSED FORMATION OF CONNECTIONS BY THE FOWER 
OF AN IDEA TO PRODUCE THE ACT WHICH IT REPRESENTS 

Next, and even more orthodox, is the theory of ideo-motor 
action, that the idea of an act or of the result of an act, or of 
some part of such result, tends, in and of itself, to produce or 
connect with that act. Accordingly an act may be bound to 
any situation by connecting with that situation some conscious 
representation of that act. 

The classic statement of the power to bind acts to situa- 
tions by so linking ideas of them is given by James in the often 
quoted dictum : — ■ 

"We may then lay it down for certain that every represen- 
tation of a movement awakens in- some degree the actual 
movement which is its object; and awakens it in a maximum 
degree whenever it is not kept from so doing by an antagon- 
istic representation present simultaneously to the mind" ['93, 

VOl. 2, p. 526.] 

McDougall, in listing ideo-motor action as a 'general or 
non-specific innate tendency,' describes it thus : 

"In the special case in which the object to which we direct 
our attention by a volitional effort is a bodily movement, the 
movement follows immediately upon the idea in virtue of that 
mysterious connection between them of which we know almost 
nothing beyond the fact that it obtains" ['08, p. 242] ; and 
elsewhere "... the visual presentation of the movement of 
another is apt to evoke the representation of a similar move- 
ment of one's own body, which, like all motor representations, 
tends to realize itself immediately in movement." ['08, p. 105] 



j6 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

Against this orthodox opinion, I contend that the idea of a 
movement (or of any response whatever) is, in and of itself, 
unable to produce it. I contend that an idea does not tend 
to provoke the act which it is an idea of, but only that which it 
connects with as a result of the laws of instinct, exercise and 
effect. 

In particular I contend that any idea, image, sensation, 
percept, or any other mental state whatever, has, apart from 
use, disuse, satisfaction and discomfort, no stronger tendency 
to call up a movement like itself or meant by it than to call up 
any other movement. Two intelligible meanings can be at- 
tached to 'the representation of a certain movement by an 
idea/ or to 'an idea having a certain movement as its object,' 
or to 'an idea being of a certain movement,' and the like. The 
first is that the idea is like the movement in the same way that 
the mental image of a red inch square is like such a square. 
The second is that the idea means the movement in the same 
way that the image of the words 'red inch square' means such 
a square. I hold that in neither meaning does an idea tend to 
produce what it represents or has as its object, or is an idea of 
— that, in and of itself, an idea tends to do so no more when 
what it represents is a movement of one's own body than when 
what it represents is a red-inch-square. 

The upholders of the orthodox view have not stated what 
'the mysterious connection' is. They may mean by 'repre- 
sent/ 'have as object' and 'be of simply 'tend to produce/ 'lead 
to/ 'evoke as response.' In that case the doctrine of the 'im- 
pulsive power of ideas' is a mere tautology, stating that an 
idea produces what it does produce, evokes as a response what 
it does evoke. Just this may indeed have been James' mean- 
ing. For he was interested primarily in the negative fact 
that no special ad hoc consciousness of 'willing' was a neces- 



THE CAPACITY TO LEa'RN 77 

sity. It was indifferent to his main purpose how an idea was 
able to lead to action. 

They may mean by 'to represent' or 'to have as object' 
simply 'to have been connected with in accordance with the laws 
of exercise and effect.' In that case, the doctrine of the 'im- 
pulsive power of ideas' is precisely, as I assert, one small fea- 
ture of the general law that any situation tends to produce the 
response that original nature and these laws of learning have 
bound to it. So Angell states, in discussing this matter, that 
"the appropriate muscular activity never follows an idea unless 
one's previous experience has in some fashion or other estab- 
lished a nexus of the habit type." ['04, p. 356 f.] 

In general, however, as the use of the doctrine of ideo- 
motor action in applications to education, medicine and ethics 
shows, its adherents do assume an intrinsic tendency of an 
idea to produce the movement which it is like, or which it 
means, or both. This appears in a recent statement of the doc- 
trine made, with awareness of the contrary view, by Wash- 
burn. She says : "A movement idea is the revival, through 
central excitation, of the sensations, visual, tactile, kinesthetic, 
originally produced by the performance of the movement it- 
self. And when such an idea is attended to, when, in popular 
language, we think hard enough of how the movement would 
"feel" and look if it were performed, then, so close is the con- 
nection between sensory and motor processes, the movement is 
instituted afresh. This is the familiar doctrine expounded by 
James in Chapter XXVI of his "Psychology." ['08, p. 280.] 

Professor Calkins still more explicitly states that in volun- 
tary action we arouse a certain response by getting in mind 
an idea that is like the response. An 'outer' volition being a 
volition to act in a certain way and an 'inner' volition being a 
volition to think in a certain way, "The volition is the image 



78 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

of an action or of a result of action which is normally simitar 
and antecedent to this same action or result. My volition to 
sign a letter is either an image of my hand moving the pen 
or an image of my signature written, and my volition to pur- 
chase something is an image of myself in the act of handing 
out money or an image of my completed purchase — golf stick 
or Barbedienne bronze." ['oi, p. 299.] Inner volitions "do 
not so closely resemble their results. The volitional image of 
an act may be, in detail, like the act as performed;" but the 
volitional image of a thought is followed by only a "partially 
similar" thought, ['01, p. 303.] 

Whatever be the precise opinions of these particular authors, 
there is a general belief that the likeness of an act to an idea 
creates an efficient bond between them. Since this belief, or 
something to the same effect, is at the bottom of widespread 
practices in medicine, moral education, school management, 
business and politics, it and the denial of it which I have made, 
must be examined. 

First of all, if James' 'representation of a movement' and 
McDougall's 'idea' are taken in their ordinary meanings, cases 
can be found where such cannot awaken the actual movements 
which they are representations of ideas of. A little child may 
have made a certain movement a thousand times and may 
be entirely willing and eager to make it, but, no matter how 
vividly the movement is described to him, he cannot make it 
as a result of the ideas of it evoked by such a description and 
his own best efforts if, hitherto, he has made the movement 
only in response to sensory stimuli. The idea has to be con- 
nected with the movement or with the sensory stimuli to which 
the movement is the response by exercise or effect before it has 
an iota of efficiency in awakening the movement. 

An idea of an act, not bound to that idea by use and effect 



THE CAPACITY TO LEARN 79 

certainly need not be immediately followed by that act. If 
all the readers of this page summon the most lively and accu- 
rate ideas that they can of sneezing, vomiting and hiccup- 
ing, one after another, not once in a hundred times will the 
actual movements be made. Either the reader cannot get a 
representation of those movements of the sort the theory has 
in mind, or the theory fails. But if the representation of the 
movement needed by the theory is such as not one in a hundred 
well-intentioned students of psychology can get, the theory be- 
comes a priori very dubious. Why should men in general 
have the capacity to provoke an act by an idea of it, but only 
such an idea as not one man in a hundred can summon ? 

In the second place, in at least the majority of connections 
where the idea of an act does produce the actual movement, 
the connection can be proved to have been built up by the laws 
of exercise and effect. When one has the idea of going to 
bed and goes, or of writing the word 'cat' and writes it, the ex- 
planation is found in the previous training that has put the 
idea of going to bed with being sleepy and other situations to 
which going to bed was the original or acquired response, or 
has put the act of going to bed with the idea of doing so. 
Let the reader now, as he sits in his chair, summon unopposed 
the idea of standing up. He may do it, for the idea of 
standing up has gone with many direct sensory situations 
which have, by exercise and effect, led to rising from a chair. 
It has, indeed, itself been bound as situation to that response. 
But let him summon the idea of diving off a post and he will 
not make the corresponding movements,* but, if he does any- 
thing, will stand up. Then of course he may make the div- 
ing movements. What 'follows immediately upon the idea' 

*That is, such portions of them as could be made from a sitting 
position. j 



80 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

of a movement is the act that has followed it or some element 
of it often or with resulting satisfaction, not the act that is like 
the idea. 

In the third place, it is certain that, apart from exercise 
and effect, such ideas of movements as one commonly gets 
do not as a rule produce the movements, and that such move- 
ments as one makes do not often come from ideas of them. 
Let the reader think of the following movements one after an- 
other : — reaching for an apple on his knee, grasping it, putting 
it in his mouth, biting it, chewing the pieces, swallowing the 
chewings; getting out of bed, walking to his bath, turning the 
faucet, climbing into the tub, splashing himself, getting out, 
shivering, taking towels from the rack, rubbing himself ; taking 
a book, opening at page i, moving the eyes as in reading; and so 
on through a thousand movements of daily life. Consider 
also the thousand or more different voluntary movements last 
made by you. How few were responses to ideas of them and 
how many were responses to sensory situations or ideas totally 
different from them but with which they had been connected by 
habit! In the illustrations given by James in the very section 
in which he announces the doctrine of ideo-motor action, all 
but one show the movement led up to by a sensorial situation 
or an idea that is not of the movement at all. That one shows 
the person making the movement in order to get the idea of it! 

Since these illustrations are typical of the evidence that has 
been used to support the doctrine that 'we think the act and 
it is done,' they may profitably be examined one by one. The 
first two are as follows : "Whilst talking I become conscious 
of a pin on the floor, or of some dust on my sleeve. Without 
interrupting the conversation, I brush away the dust or pick 
up the pin. ... the mere perception of the object and the 
fleeting notion of the act seem of themselves to bring the latter 



THE CAPACITY TO LEARN 8l 

about" ['93, vol. 2, p. 522]. Now what would be the prob- 
able response to the 'mere perception' of the dust on the sleeve 
supposing there had been no 'notion of the act'? Surely to 
brush it away. And with what would 'the notion of the act' 
have been bound by the laws of exercise and effect alone? 
Surely with the response of brushing the dust away. So also 
with picking up the pin. By the laws of exercise and effect the 
sensorial situation without the idea is adequate to produce the 
response; and th-e idea itself needs no potency from its likeness 
to the act. 

"Similarly I sit at table after dinner and find myself from 
time to time taking nuts and raisins out of the dish and eating 
them . . . the perception of the fruit and the fleeting notion 
that I may eat it seem fatally to bring the act about." [ibid., 
p. 522 f.] It seems clear that for the behavior in question 
no other force than the perception of the fruit and the laws 
of exercise and effect is needed. The notion 'that I may eat it' 
is here not only one to which the act might well be bound by 
exercise and effect, but is apparently nowise like the acts to 
which it leads. The notion seems to be a rather vague one, 
'all right to eat it,' occurring once, while the act is a very com- 
plex one of reaching, grasping, carrying to the mouth, etc., 
and is repeated over and over again. 

The fourth illustration is getting out of bed : — . . . "the 

idea flashes across me, 'Hollo! I must lie here no longer' — an 

idea which at that lucky instant awakens no contradicting or 

paralyzing suggestions, and consequently produces immediately 

its appropriate motor effects." [ibid., p. 524.] Here the idea 

is patently not a representation of the movement at all. The 

'Hollo' and T must' show clearly that it is in words,* not in 

*If by any sophistry it could be twisted into a representation of leg 
and trunk movements, it would be only the representation of lying still 
plus the idea of negation. 
6 



82 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

images of leg, trunk and arm movements. Its motor effects 
are appropriate, not in the sense of being in the least like it or 
represented by it, but in the sense of being the effects which 
that idea, when uncontested, had, by exercise and effect, come 
to produce in that man. The 'Hollo! I must' is a lineal de- 
scendant of the sensory admonitions from others received 
during life and connected each with its sequent response by 
use, satisfaction, and the discomforting punishment attached 
to opposite courses. 

These four cases are all such as a believer in the entire suf- 
ficiency of the laws of exercise and effect might properly 
choose as illustrations of their action. Moreover, in three the 
sensorial situation is adequate, and in the fourth the idea nowise 
represents or is like the movements. 

The fifth case is : "Try to feel as if you were crooking your 
finger, whilst keeping it straight. In a minute it will fairly 
tingle with the imaginary change of position; yet it will not 
sensibly move because its not really moving is also a part of 
what you have in mind. Drop this idea, think of the move- 
ment purely and simply, with all brakes off ; and, presto ! it takes 
place with no effort at all." [ibid., p. 527.] Now the essen- 
tial fact here is that when one is told to try to feel as if he 
were crooking his finger, he tends, in the case of many sub- 
jects, to respond by taking an obvious way to get that feeling — 
namely, by actually crooking his finger. He responds to the 
request, regardless of any ideas beyond his understanding of 
the words, by a strong readiness to crook his finger. Being 
forbidden, he restrains the impulse. The 'tingling' is not from 
the imaginary change of the finger's position but from the 
real restraint from changing its position. The tingling occurs 
with individuals who cannot imagine the finger's movement. 
Far from showing that the imagined movement is adequate, 



THE CAPACITY TO LEARN 83 

in and of itself, to cause the movement, such cases show that it is 
unsafe to infer that the image comes first in cases where delib- 
erately evoked images of movements are accompanied by the 
movements or parts thereof. 

It appears then that the great majority of movements are 
not produced by ideas of them and that the majority of ideas 
of movements do not produce the movements which they rep- 
resent. When an idea does produce the movement which it is 
an idea of, that movement gives evidence of having been bound 
to that idea by exercise or effect. The connection whereby 
the idea of a movement could, in and of itself, produce that 
movement would indeed be mysterious if it existed, but it does 
not exist. 



chapter vii 
The Anatomy and Physiology of Original Tendencies 

Intellect, character and skill have their physiological basis 
in the structure and activities of the neurones and accessory 
organs which compose the nervous system. The original 
nature of man in these respects depends on the original struc- 
ture and activities of the neurones. 

The neurones are essentially threads of specialized proto- 
plasm each connecting one part of the body with another. Like 
other elements of the body, they eat, excrete, grow and die; 
but their special functions in the animal's life are sensitivity, 
conductivity, and modifiability. Sensitivity means the capacity 
to be excited to action at one end by one or many agencies. 
Conductivity means the capacity to transmit the action thus 
excited, or some consequence of it, to the other end of the 
neurone. Modifiability means the capacity to change in ac- 
cordance with use shortly to be described. 

They are arranged in an elaborate system of receptors, 
easily accessible to important influences within and without the 
body, effectors in intimate connection with organs for action, 
and connectors which lead from the receptors to the effectors. 
Each neurone of this total system has its special connections 
with the outside world, with the other organs of the body, or 
with other neurones. 

THE STRUCTURE OF THE NEURONES 

Figures 4 and 5 show typical neurones, varying widely in 
shape, but maintaining the common element of a thread-like 

84 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 85 

rec. 




Fig 4 A, B, C, and D. Four neurones. The discharging end of D 
fully shown, being far beyond the limits of the drawing. 
A is after Kolliker ['02, p. 834], after Marenghi. 
B is after Kolliker ['96, p. 654]. 
C is after Van Gehuchten ['00, vol. 2. p. I75J- 
D is after Kolliker ['96, p. 349]- 



86 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 








di$. 



rec. 





B O 

Fig. s. A, B, and C. Three neurones. The discharging ends of B and C are 
not shown, being far beyond the limits of the drawing. 
B is after Barker ['01, p. 70]. C is after Kolliker ['96, p. 46]. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 87 

body suitable to put one part of the animal in touch with other 
parts — to conduct stimuli from one part of the body to another 
— to let what happens to one part influence what is done by 
another part. For convenience I have marked the receiving 
end in certain cases r, and the discharging or transmitting end 
dis. It should be noted that in the drawings the diameter of 
the neurones is necessarily enormously exaggerated in com- 
parison with their length. A neurone may be two feet long, 
but so small in diameter that a hundred side by side would 
make a line no wider than one of the lines in the drawings. 

Figures 6 and 7 show representative structures where the 
receiving ends of the neurones are in connection with events 
outside or inside the body. 

Figures 8 and 9 show representative structures where the 
discharging ends of neurones are in connection with muscles. 

Figures 10, 11 and 12 show representative synapses or 
places of connection between the discharging end of one neurone 
and the receiving end of another neurone. 

THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE NEURONES 

Figures 13, 14 and 15 show, more or less schematically, 
certain cases of the arrangement of neurones in series to form 
conduction-lines or conduction-chains. The whole nervous 
system is a combination of millions of such conduction-chains. 
The neurones concerned in the behavior of a single man prob- 
ably exceed in number by a thousand-fold all the telephone 
lines* in the world, and a description of the details of their 
arrangement, if such were known, would be an almost endless 
task. 

Four general features of the original arrangement of man's 

*Counting as a "line" every wire length which acts as a unit. 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 
B 




Fig. 6. The receiving ends of various first sensory neurones, or receptors. 

A. Receiving ends around the base of hairs (in the mouse). 

B. Cross section of the tissue shown in A. 

C. Neurone endings in epithelial cells. 

D. Endings around pigment cells. 

E. An ending in the lining of the oesophagus. 

F. An ending in a tactile corpuscle. 

G. Endings in the papilla foliata; g, taste-buds with intra- and circum- 
gemmule neurone-endings; i, inter-gemmale neurone endings. 

H. Endings of the rods and cones in the retina of man 

A, B, C, and D are after Edinger ['96, p. 42], C being after Bethe and 
D being after Eberth and Bunge. E is after Barker [01, p. 362], after Retzius. 
F is after Barker ['01, p. 386], after Smirnow. G and H are after Kolliker 
['02, p. 28 and p. 820]. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 89 





B 





C 



•^^a n £_4 i _x--x- 1 4 





F 



Fig. 7. The receiving ends of various first sensory neurones or receptors (continued). 
A Ends of neurones in the Lamina spiralis and organ of Corti. The ending 
marked ? may be a discharging end. 
B. Ends of the first olfactory neurones in the nose. 
C and D. Taste-buds and the receiving ends of gustatory neurones. 

E. A receiving end of a neurone in the macula acustica sacculi. 

F. A sensory neurone ending in the skin. 

A is after Kolliker ['02, p . 952]. B is after Van Gehuchten ['00, vol. 1, p. 
244]. C is after Barker ['01, p. 527], after v. Lenhossek. D is after Kolliker 
['02, p. 29]. E is after Barker ['01, p. 502], after v. Lenhossek. F is 
after Van Gehuchten ['oo, vol. 2, p. 372]. 



po 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 




FlG. 8, 




Fig. 9- 



Fig. 8. The discharging end of a motor neurone on the gastrocnemius muscle 
of the frog. After Barker, after Schiefferdecker, after W. Kiihne. 

Fig. 9. The discharging ends of neurones in striped muscles of the white rat. 
After Van Gehuchten ['oo, vol. i, p. 205]. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 91 





ax. 

Fig. 10. Fig. 11. 

Fig. 10. The discharging ends of two neurones of the optic nerve (dis.) in 
synapse (sy.) with portions of the receiving ends of two neurones of the 
optic lobe. These two neurones are shown in part only in the figure. Their 
axones (ax.) continue far beyond the limits of the drawing. After Van 
Gehuchten ['00, vol. 2, p. 250]. 

Fig. 11. The olfactory receptors, or first sensory olfactory neurones (ol.), their 
discharging ends (dis.), in synapse (sy.) with the receiving ends (r.) of seven 
of the second sensory olfactory neurones. The axones of the latter (ax.) 
continue far beyond the limits of the drawing. After Van Gehuchten ['00, 
vol. 2, p. 287]. 



neurones may be specially noted. First, the system as a whole 
is on the plan of a system of conduction-units running from 
parts of the body where events important to the life of the 
animal are 'sensed' or allowed to impress him, to parts of the 
body by which he 'reacts to' or adapts himself to, or changes 
his behavior as result of, these events, via a very complex 
switchboard or set of relay stations permitting a very great 
variety of combinations, redirections, shuntings and retard- 



9 2 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 




Fig. 12. A typical synapse in the cerebellar cortex. The discharging end-branch 
of a neurone intertwined with and applied closely to the surface of the 
receiving end of a Purkinje neurone. The former is shown in full black; 
the latter in stipple. The full detail of the latter is not shown. After Johnston 
['06, p. 241]. 

ations of the conducted currents. Second, in particular, there 
are arrangements whereby several neurones may discharge 
into one neurone as shown schematically in Figure 16, and in 
a real case in Fig. 17, so that there can be a convergence of 
stimuli separately initiated toward a common final path. Third, 
there are arrangements whereby one neurone may discharge 
into several neurones as shown schematically in Figure 18, and 
in a real case in Fig. 19, so that there may be a distribution or 
diffusion or varied transmission of one initial stimulus to many 
final paths. 

Fourth, the connecting, or associative, or 'switchboard/ 
neurones form, especially in man, an apparatus for redirection 
of stimuli which is almost infinitely complex and which is 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 



93 





B 





13. A, B, C, and D. The arrangement of neurones in series to torm con- 
duction lines or continuous chains. A shows two neurones forming a chain 
from the skin (sk.) to the muscle (m.) via the synapse (sy.) in the spinal 
cord. B shows three neurones forming a chain from the skin (sk.) to the 
muscle (m.) via the synapses sy. 1 and sy. 2. C shows at the bottom chains 
such as are shown in A and B except that the skin and receiving part of the 
first neurone are not shown. C shows, in the upper three-fourths of the diagram, 
parts of other chains, leading from the first or second sensory neurones to 
the cortex. D shows parts of chains leading from the cortex to the muscles. 
A is from Van Gehuchten ['00, vol. 1, p. 517]. B is after Edinger ['96, p. 
31]. C and D are after Van Gehuchten ['00, vol. 2, p. 513 and p. 512]. 



94 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 




Fig. 14. Shows the chain of neurones conducting stimuli from the olfactory sense 
organ to the Cornu Ammonis, (c. a.) and thence in various directions to make 
further connections. The neurones marked 1, 2 and 3 designate in order the 
first three links of this chain, the synapse between the first and the second sets 
of neurones, the second and the third and so on being marked Si, Sn, and Si 11. 
The neurones of group 2 shown cut off at a. c. are neurones which conduct 
across to the other hemisphere of the brain. After Van Gehuchten ['00, vol. 2.. 
p. 294]. 

Fig. 15. Shows part of the chain of neurones which, beginning in the rods and 
cones of the retina, continue to the occipital lobe of the brain. The last two 
links in the chain are shown here — the neurones which form the sensory part 
of the optic nerve receiving stimuli in the retina and discharging across 
synapses in the corpora quadrigemina, external geniculate bodies and optic 
layer to neurones which conduct thence to the occipital lobe. After Van 
Gehuchten ['00, vol. 2, p. 253]. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 95 



> 



Hi p- 

Fig. 1 6. Schema of Convergence. 




Fig. 17. Convergence in the Olfactory Receptors. 




Fig. 18. Schema of Distribution. 




Fig. 19. Distribution in a Spinal Reflex Path. 



g6 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

extraordinarily apt for varied transmission, so that the same 
stimulus may, according to minor cooperating conditions, be 
conducted to many different final paths, and so that many dif- 
ferent stimuli may, according to some common feature, be 
conducted to the same final path. The varieties of connections 
which appear in the case of the instincts of multiform mental 
and physical activity, curiosity, manipulation, visual explora- 
tion and vocalization, and in the millions of habits which 
develop from these instincts, have a fit mechanism in this very 
sensitive, very complex and very modifiable switchboard ar- 
rangement of man's neurones. 

An original bond between a situation and^a response in 
human behavior has as its physiological basis an original ease 
of conduction of the physiological action aroused in certain 
neurones toward a certain final path rather than toward any 
other. The original arrangement of the neurones whereby 
the discharging end of a given neurone A, is near to the receiv- 
ing ends of B, C, D, etc., and remote from the receiving ends 
of X, Y, Z, etc., is the main determinant of what responses of 
sensation and movement the given situation will provoke. 
Original connections in behavior depend in large part upon the 
original location of neurones in the brain — the original dis- 
tances between the discharging ends of the neurones severally 
and the receiving ends of all others. 

They may depend upon other facts also. The synapses 
between the discharging end of A and the receiving ends of 
B, C, and D might conceivably be identical, so far as concerns 
the distances A., to B , A .. to C , and A ,. to D : and yet 

dis r 7 dis r dis r ' J 

the ease of conduction might be very different in the three 
cases. Just as .three membranes may vary in permeability by a 
certain substance, or as. three joints, one of copper, one of gold 
and one of rubber, would vary in resistance to the electric cur- 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 97 

rent, so the three synapses — A->-B, A->-C and A->-D — may 
vary in resistance to the stimuli conducted by A, otherwise than 
by differences in mere distance. If there were such variations 
in the permeability of 'synapses of equal distances,' and if they 
were original in man, they would be a second determinant of 
the path that any given stimulus would take — and so of the 
response that any given situation would originally provoke. 
Proximity of neurones in space, then, there must be as a basis 
for connections in behavior; a nerve impulse cannot jump an 
inch from the discharging end of one to the receiving end of 
another. Permeability of some special sort may be an addi- 
tional requirement. 

SENSITIVITY AND CONDUCTIVITY 

About the detailed physiology of sensitivity — the capacity 
of a neurone to be aroused by certain events at its receiving 
end (or, much less frequently, along its course) — very little is 
known. That little is not specially relevant to our purpose. 
The same is true of conductivity within a single neurone. 
What the action of a neurone is, whereby something happening 
at the receiving end makes something happen at the discharg- 
ing end, is unknown; and the acceptance of one or another of 
the various present hypotheses would not alter any conclusion 
to be stated here. Conductivity over a chain of neurones in- 
volves obviously sensitivity, discharge, and conduction across 
the synapses, as well as mere conductivity within the neurones 
taken singly. That there is some specialized action correspond 
ing to the discharge and conduction across the synapse seems 
probable, but what it is cannot be affirmed. 



98 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE- CAPACITY TO LEARN AND OF 
READINESS 

The modifiability of a neurone might consist in changes in 
it:— (1) whereby its form was altered so that its receiving 
end was in different spatial relations to the stimulating agents, 
or so that its discharging end was in different spatial relations 
to the neighboring receiving ends; (2) whereby its receiving 
end was more or less sensitive to forces acting on it; (3) 
whereby it offered more or less resistance as a conductor, or 
otherwise changed its conducting action; (4) whereby it dis- 
charged in a different way, or ( 5 ) whereby other differences 
were produced. 

Its modifications in the course of growth obviously include 
the first sort — alterations of its spatial relations, — as is shown 
roughly in Figures 20 and 21. So also do the modifications 
produced in it by certain diseases. What modifications are 
produced in a neurone by its own ordinary activities are mat- 
ters largely for hypothesis. 



THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 



?9 




Fig. 20, 




Fig. 2i. 

Fig. zo. Immature neurones in a section of half of the spinal cord of a chick 
at the third day of incubation. After Van Gehuchten ['oo, vol. i, p. 282], 
after Ramon y Cajal. The neurones shown nere will grow to a complexity 
equal to that of those shown in Figs. 4 and 5. The ends of the five neurones 
shown under s. which run toward the centre of the diagram will grow into 
the spinal cord to form long axones with many collaterals each branching in 
an elaborate terminal arborization in close proximity to some associative or 
motor neurone; the other ends of these neurones will grow out to the surface 
of the skin or elsewhere. 

The four neurones at the left of m. will grow out into the body to connect 
with certain muscle fibres. The other neurones will also grow in such a 
way that their ends assume special space relations to the ends of other sensory 
or motor neurones. The two ends of neurones at g. are growing parts or 
growing 'cones.' 

Pig. 21. Neurones in various stages of growth. A very early stage is shown at 
a; a somewhat later staere at b; neurones whose receiving ends have some- 
thing like their eventual complexity are shown at c. After v. Lenhossek ['95, 
P- 92] 



CHAPTER VIII 

The Order and Dates of Appearance and 
Disappearance of Original Tendencies 

Different original tendencies appear at different dates after 
the fertilization of the ovum — the beginning of a new individ- 
ual life. Some are delayed only until birth; some, till long 
after birth. The order of appearance and the length of the 
intervals from the start of life to the appearance of each tend- 
ency are not random. Typical conditions exist for man as a 
species, with, of course, very wide variations. For this typical 
order and these typical intervals there must be a reason. 

Original tendencies also may persist for different lengths 
of time after their first appearance. The influence of the 
discomfort produced by them is often the only explanation 
needed for this transitoriness and its degree. But in some 
cases the original tendency seems to be inherently transitory, 
to disappear from the organism's repertory even though its 
exercise produces no discomfort to the individual. For these 
wanings and their dates also there must be a reason. 

Two theories have been suggested to account for the order 
and the dates of appearance and disappearance of original 
tendencies. The first is the Recapitulation Theory. The 
second is the Utility Theory. 

THE RECAPITULATION THEORY 

The Recapitulation Theory in its clearest form is that the 
order of appearance of original tendencies in the individual 
is more or less exactly that in which they have appeared ir. 

ioo 



ORDER AND DATES IOI 

the race- — that is, in the entire ancestry of the individual, — and 
that the intervals from the fertilization of the ovum to the 
dates of appearance of the individual's original tendencies 
bear more or less exactly the same proportions one to another 
that the intervals from the beginning of life in the animal 
kingdom to the dates of appearance of the same tendencies 
in the race bear one to another. The order and dates of dis- 
appearance in the individual parallel in a similar manner the 
corresponding facts in man's ancestry. The reason assigned 
for this parallelism between an individual and his entire ances- 
try in the order and dates of appearance and disappearance 
of original tendencies by the recapitulation theory is the sup- 
posed bionomic law. This is a law of the germ's development 
whereby any change made in it is made with an additional 
mechanism that sets the date of the change's effect on the indi- 
vidual developing from that germ later than the dates of the 
effects of changes made hitherto in the germ. Suppose, for- 
example, that for a thousand centuries from the origin of life, 
man's ancestors floated aimlessly, then for a thousand swam 
by cilia, then for a thousand wriggled like snakes, then for a 
thousand walked on four feet, then for a thousand both walked, 
climbed and swung as do the monkeys. Let us suppose fur- 
ther that each new tendency was accompanied by the loss of 
the old one. Then, by this extreme form of the recapitulation 
theory, the human individual should, beginning at the start 
of his individual life, possess these tendencies in that same 
order, retain each for an equal time, and lose them one after 
another (except of course the last, whose loss would depend 
upon whether 'the individual's ancestry had lost it). 

A more general illustration in graphic form will help to 
fix this extreme form of the Recapitulation Theory in memory. 
Suppose tendencies A, B, C, D, etc., to have appeared in man's 



102 



THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 



ancestry at the times shown by the upper ends of the lines at 
the left hand of Fig. 22 and to have been lost at the times 



TIME LINE FOR 

THE RACE 
YEARS 



3.000.000 



6.000000 



9.000.O00 



12.000.00.0 



15.000.000 



18.000.000 



21.000.000 



£4000.000 



27.000.000 



31.000.000 



TIME LINE FOR 

THE INDIVIDUAL 

YEARS 

A 



BIRTH 
2 
4 
6 
8 
10 
12 
-114 
16 

- 18 

- 20 

- 22 
24 



Fig. 22. 

shown by the lower ends of these lines. Then tendencie*s A, 
B, C, D, etc., will appear in man's life and, apart from outside 
influence, will disappear therefrom, as shown by the lines at 
ihe right of Fig. 22. 



ORDER AND DATES 



I03 



This clear and extreme form of the recapitulation theory is 
probably held by no student of human nature; for, obviously, 



TIME LINE FOR 
THE RACE 



3.000.000 



6.000000 



9.000.000 



12.000000 



15.000.000 



18.000.000 



21.000.000 



24.000.000 



27.000.000 



31.000.000 



TIME LINE FOR 
THE INDIVIDUAL 



Ai 




BIRTH 



MG. 23. 



the time during which the early ancestral tendencies are pos- 
sessed by the individual is, if not zero, at least a far smaller 
fraction of the time during which the late ancestral tendencies 



104 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

are possessed by him than is the case with the times in the 
case of the race. So the parallelism of individual and race 
is universally amended by supposing the early racial tendencies 
to be in the individual abbreviated in some rough proportion 
to their earliness. 

Instead of Fig. 22, then, we would have something like 
Fig. 23, wherein A's stay in the individual is one-tenth as long 
a fraction of the period from conception to the adult condition, 
as A's stay in the individual is of the period from the protozoa 
to modern man ; B's stay is two-tenths ; C's is four-tenths 
and D's is seven-tenths. 

To make sure that the reader gets a just idea of what the 
recapitulation-theory means to its adherents and of how they 
use it in explaining human nature, I quote at some length 
from their most instructive statements about it. The following 
are samples of the more general statements : 

"The course of mental development is exactly determined 
through the relation of ontogenesis (individual development) 
to phylogenesis (the development of the^race)*T The~develop- 
ment of the higher" (purposive ancTrational) activities is regu- 
lated in every respect in accord with the previously developed 
instincts, and is primarily conditioned by them. No influence 
that works in opposition to this development and to the law 
of inheritance of racial traits in order can ever reach a suitable 
adaptation, but only disturbs the natural course of development, 
and creates abnormal misdirected endeavor." [Schneider, '82, 
p. 489] 

"The individual, from conception to senescence, follows 
the order of development of the race." [Burk, F. L., '98, 

P- 36] 

"As in the physical world, so in the psychical there is a 
natural order of growth. Since it is the order of nature that 
the new organism should pass through certain developmental 
stages, it behooves us to study nature's plan and seek rather 



ORDER AND DATES 105 

to aid than to thwart it. For nature must be right; there is 
no higher criterion. There is, therefore, no study of more 
vital importance to the educationist than this of the natural 
development of organisms. The parallelism of phylogeny and 
ontogeny enforces the argument in favor of natural develop- 
ment and the doctrine of katharsis or vaccination as applied 
to the moral growth of the child. It furnishes a double sup- 
port to the view that education should be a process of orderly 
and gradual unfolding, without precocity and without inter- 
ference, from lower to ever higher stages ; that forcing is un- 
natural and that the mental pabulum should be suited to the 
stage of development reached. So long as we keep the end in 
view and do not cause the child to linger in any of the stages, 
we need not fear the discipline that each stage is calculated to 
give as a preparation for the next. For what Von Baer long 
ago said of animals is true also of the child : 'The type of 
each animal appears to fix itself at the very beginning in the 
embryo and to dominate the whole development.' 

"The period of animal recapitulation is short. In this 
work the attempt has not been made to deal with the recapitu- 
lation of human stages of development, but reasoning from the 
fact that the length of time taken to recapitulate a period does 
not depend upon the duration of that period phylogenetically, 
but upon its recency, we may conclude that the recapitulation 
of human stages of development is much longer than that of 
the longest animal stage, viz., the ape stage." [Guillet, 'oo, 
pp. 427-428] 

THE UTILITY THEORY 

The Utility Theory explains the dates of original tend- 
encies by the same causes as account for their existence — 
variation and selection. Other things being equal, the date 
at which a tendency appears is that one of the many varying 
dates at which it has appeared in our ancestry which has been 
most serviceable in keeping the stock alive. Thus suckling, 



Io6 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

though late in the race, is early in the individual. The sex 
instincts, though early in the race, are very late in the individ- 
ual. Walking on all fours, though the possession of the race 
for perhaps millions of years, is evanescent or non-existent as 
a human instinct ; creeping, though not a duplicate of any im- 
portant form of locomotion possessed and then lost in our 
ancestral line, is one of the most emphatic transitory tenden- 
cies of infancy. 

An advocate of the Utility Theory should not assert that 
the actual order is in every particular useful (that is, more 
useful than a chance order) ; much less that it is the most use- 
ful order for survival that there could be. An order of original 
tendencies has to be very injurious if the individual possessing 
it is to be very frequently eliminated. For a better order 
than whatever order exists to be selected for survival, it must 
first appear as a variation. That is, the theory that the order 
and dates of appearance and disappearance of original tend- 
encies are due to natural selection is subject to the same inter- 
pretation as the theory of natural selection elsewhere. 

I have not found instructive quotations representing the 
utility theory. It has been, perhaps, assumed by opponents 
of the recapitulation theory, but they have generally been sat- 
isfied to point out the latter' s impossibilities, without advanc- 
ing a constructive doctrine. As held by the writer, the utility^ 
theory of the order of appearance and dates of the original 
tendencies in human intellect and character is that the same 
causes which account for the origin and perpetuation of a 
tendency account for its time relations to other tendencies. 
Whatever makes the tendency happen at all makes it happen at 
some date and place in the total order of the animal's develop- 
ment. Whatever makes it vary at all makes it vary in its date. 
Other things being equal, the date which will be perpetuated 



ORDER AND DATES *07 

will be that one of the many varying dates at which it appears, 
which proves most serviceable in keeping the species alive. 
Similarly for its date of disappearance. What the time rela- 
tions of human original tendencies are, like what the tenden- 
cies themselves are, is thus the result of variation by whatever 
influences the germplasm and selection by utility. 

THE GRADUAL WAXING OF DELAYED INSTINCTS AND CAPACITIES 

It is a favorite dictum of superficial psychology and peda- 
gogy that instincts lie entirely dormant and then spring into 
full strength within a few weeks. At a certain stage, we 
are told, such and such a tendency has its 'nascent period' or 
ripening time. Three is the age for fear, six is the age for 
climbing, fifteen is the age for cooperativeness, and the like. 
The same doctrine is applied to the supposed 'faculties' or very 
general capacities of the mind. Within a year or two around 
eight the child is said to change from a mere bundle of sensory 
capacities, to a child possessed of imagination; somewhere 
around thirteen another brief score of months brings his rea- 
soning up from near zero to nearly full energy; a year or 
two somewhere in the 'teens creates altruism ! 

These statements are almost certainly misleading. The 
one instinct whose appearance seems most like a dramatic 
rushing upon life's stage — the sex instinct — is found upon 
careful study to be gradually maturing for years. The capa- 
city for reasoning shows no signs by any tests as yet given 
of developing twice as much in any one year from five to 
twenty-five as in any other. In the cases where the differences 
between children of different ages may be taken roughly to 
measure the rate of inner growth of capacities, what data we 
have show nothing to justify the doctrine of sudden ripening 



108 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

in a serial order. Thus the results in the case of the .rate 
of tapping (as on a telegraph key) for boys are shown in 
Figure 24. The dash line represents the average ability year 
by year from six to sixteen as determined by Bryan ['92]* 
and the continuous line that determined by Gilbert ['94]. 
Figure 25 shows the average of the two curves. These 



JL 



6 7 8 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 

Fig. 24. The average rate of tapping for boys of each age from 6 to 16. The 
continuous line represents Gilberts estimate; the dash line represents Bryan's 
estimate (for the left- wrist-movement). 

curves suggest fluctuations, notably a failure of the thirteen- 
year-olds to surpass the twelve-year-olds, a notable superiority 
of the sixteen-year-olds over the fifteen-year-olds, and a greater 
gain from six to eleven than thereafter, but the development 
of the capacity is, as a whole, gradual. At least, thatvword 
would seem to most observers to fit the progress measured 
by Figures 24 and 25. 

* For one of eight movements used by him, the 'Left Wrist/ 



ORDER AND DATES 



109 



The few interests whose strength, period by period, have 
been more or less well measured, give no evidence of any 
sudden accession to power. Thus collecting * seems to increase 
in vigor gradually from before six to ten. The capacities 



30— 



25— 



a 15 

to 



§ 10 



5 — 



JL 



6 7 8 9 10 II 12 13 14 

AGE IN YEARS 

Fig. 25. The average of the two curves shown in Fig. 24. 



15 



of sensory discrimination, memory, observation and the like 
which have been measured in children at different ages, are 
of course in the conditions that they are at any age because of 



* According to C. F. Burk ['00] twelve hundred boys and girls reported 
to their teachers the names of the objects which they were at the time 
collecting. The average number of collections reported by those of each 
age from six to seventeen is given as follows: 



HO THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

training as well as inner growth, and the facts concerning 
their rates of gain cannot be used at their face value in our 
argument. But so far as they do go, they give no support 
to the theory of the sudden rise of inner tendencies. Indeed 
every tendency that has been subjected to anything like rigid 
scrutiny seems to fit the word gradual rather than the word 
sudden in the rate of its maturing. 

In the case of the lower animals, where control of training 
and accurate measurement of the animal's performance is 
feasible, gradualness of development is found the rule for 
delayed instincts. Thus the author ['99] found that a dozen 
days or so were required from the first beginnings to the full 
development of fear of large moving objects in chicks, that 
the fighting of roosters shows its first feeble beginnings as 
early as the sixth day of the chick's life, that the balancing 
reaction (on a swinging perch) develops gradually from the 
sixth day on. 

Average Number of Active Collections for Different Ages 
Age Av. per Boy Av. per Girl Av. per Child 

6 years 1.2 1.9 1.4 collections 

7 " 2.1 2.6 2.3 

8 " 3-5 4-5 4 

9 " 3-9 41 4 

10 " 4.4 4.4 4-4 

11 " 3-4 3-3 3-3 

12 " 3 3 3 

13 " 3-5 3-4 3-4 

14 " 3 3 3 

15 " 2.7 3-2 3 

16 " 2.1 3-3 2.8 

17 " 2 3 2.5 

Such errors as children would make in their reports probably would 
act to make the rise from six to ten seem more sudden than it really was 
Even as reported, the rise is very gradual. 



ORDER AND DATES III 

THE PROBABLE. FREQUENCY OF TRANSITORINESS IN ORIGINAL 

TENDENCIES 

James' description of the fact of transitoriness and of its 
extent in man is the best introduction to the topic of this 
section. He says : 

"Leaving lower animals aside, and turning" to human in- 
stincts, we see the law of transiency corroborated on the widest 
scale by the alternation of different interests and passions as 
human life goes on. With the child, life is all play and fairy- 
tales and learning the external properties of 'things ;' with the 
youth it is bodily exercises of a more systematic sort, novels of 
the real world, boon-fellowship and song, friendship and love, 
nature, travel and adventure, science and philosophy; with the 
man, ambition and policy, acquisitiveness, responsibility to 
others, and the selfish zest of the battle of life. If a boy 
grows up alone at the age of games and sports, and learns 
neither to play ball, nor row, nor sail, nor ride, nor skate, nor 
fish, nor shoot, probably he will be sedentary to the end of his 
days ; and, though the best of opportunities be afforded him for 
learning these things later, it is a hundred to one but he will 
pass them by and shrink back from the effort of taking- those 
necessary first steps the prospect of which, at an earlier age, 
would have filled him with eager delight. The sexual passion 
expires after a protracted reign; but it is well known that its 
peculiar manifestations in a given individual depend almost 
entirely on the habits he may form during the early period of 
its activity. Exposure to bad company then makes him a loose 
liver all his days; chastity kept at first makes the same easier 
later on. In all pedagogy the great thing is to strike the iron 
while hot, and to seize the wave of the pupil's interest in each 
successive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge 
may be got and a habit of skill acquired — a headway of interest, 
m short, secured, on which afterward the individual may float, 
There is a happy moment for fixing skill in drawing, for mak- 



112 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

ing boys collectors in natural history, and presently dissectors 
and botanists; then for initiating them into the harmonies of 
mechanics and the wonders of physical and chemical law. 
Later, introspective psychology and the metaphysical and re- 
ligious mysteries take their turn; and last of all, the drar>*l ot 
human affairs and worldly wisdom in the widest sense of the 
term." ['93, vol. 2, p. 400 f.] 

The particular statements of this characteristic passage form 
a sagacious commentary on the loss of interests as a man grows 
up and becomes engaged in new pleasures and duties, but it is 
doubtful whether they do show the law of transiency to be very 
widely active in human instincts. Two forces, other than the 
law of transitoriness, must be considered, before attributing the 
ebbs in man's activities so exclusively to it. The first is the 
force of new situations — changed circumstances about man — 
rather than a changed nature in him. The second is the force 
of changes in his nature due to special acquisitions — learned 
habits — not to mere losses of transitory instincts and capacities. 

Consider, for example, the loss of zeal for 'play and fairy 
tales and learning the external properties of things' by the 
youth and grown man. Is not a part of the loss due to 
changed circumstances? Would not a man regain a portion 
of his zeal for play, if, say, all the fellow-members of his stock 
exchange or club or factory began by a miracle to play ? Is it 
not, in part, the avoidance of the disapproval of his fellows 
which makes the youth or man cast off childish things. Given 
a situation such that play adds no discomforting moral or social 
results, and the youth or man does seem to act as if the sup- 
posedly lost zest had simply been held down by lack of a con- 
genial situation such as it customarily had in childhood. So 
the student body of a college may all spin tops or play marbles; 
hard-headed brokers may gambol in an initiation festivity ; and 



ORDER AND DATES 113 

joyless politicians may jump up and down and dance in a ring-. 
Are not the pleasures of travel and the stock sports of amuse- 
ment-parks both evidence that the love of 'learning the external 
properties of things' persists in fair measure into adult years? 
New places, new sights, new experiences attract grown men 
and women also. It is even a stock item in everyday humor 
that the boy's craving for the circus is his father's excuse. 
The displays of aeroplanes of the last two years seem to be 
frequented by adults because of the same interest in learning 
the external properties of things which makes the child besiege 
the engine-house. 

Of the difference between the child and the adult in this 
respect which remains after changed circumstances have been 
allowed for, is not a part due to the addition of habits rather 
than the loss of instincts? 'To design a real engine in com- 
petition with other inventors under the stimulus of the world's 
needs expressed in money price and personal distinction' is so 
much more satisfying to man's nature — even to his original 
nature — than 'playing cars' or 'playing build bridges,' that the 
serious habit eventually makes the play out of which it sprang 
an inferior interest. If a man gets only innocent pleasure 
from hearing fairy tales, and gets not only innocent pleasure 
but also comforts for his family from writing them, we must 
expect that the habit will displace the less remunerative instinct. 
The youth may be more interested in the internal properties of 
things revealed by mechanics, electricity, chemistry and biology, 
just because he has already had, and used up, the satisfactions 
of knowing external facts about chairs and tables, tops and 
balls, horses and dogs. His apparently new interests may be 
the same fundamental interest turned to new objects because 
of a change produced in him by experience. The old objects 
have lost their appeal because of the connections they have 
8 



114 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

acquired in the course of his training — not because of an inevit- 
able decay of some original welcoming force. 

The discounts for changes in the situation and acquired 
changes in the man, which I have suggested as necessary in the 
case of 'play and fairy tales and learning the external proper- 
ties of things/ can be shown to be appropriate in the case of 
the other losses incurred by the process of maturity which 
James has chosen as illustrations. 

If this is the case with James's temperate account, what 
shall we say of those who describe the inner growth of man's 
instincts and capacities altogether as a series of tendencies, 
appearing, waiting, lasting a brief space and vanishing unless 
then and there fixed as habits — like the ripening of fruits which 
soon decay unless preserved by the housewifery of habits, or 
like a procession of candidates which pass through an office, 
disappearing for good and all unless enlisted at the time and 
drilled by some recruiting officer of the mind. Such a sharp 
definition of the rise and fall of original tendencies in a serial 
order of stages or epochs seems to me to be a gross exaggera- 
tion, corresponding only here and there to the actual progress 
of inner development. 

To refute such extravagant notions of the suddenness of 
appearance of original tendencies, their brevity of stay and 
their disappearance without other cause than an inherent orig- 
inal transitoriness of the neural bonds, it should suffice to think 
over the tendencies themselves, each in connection with the 
treatment it receives at the hands of the changes produced by 
circumstances in the stimulating situation and responding 
organism. For example, the readiness of the hunting response 
persists even in spite of the inadequate stimuli and absence of 
rewards of a modern village or town, so that, if habitual 
restraints are removed, men will gladly leave their work to 



ORDER AND DATES 1 15 

chase an escaped cat. They will, with slight encouragement, 
undergo notable privations and expense to spend a few days 
in tracking game and possessing themselves of animal carcasses 
got by so near an approach as is possible to man's original 
naked-handed pursuit. Collecting and hoarding survive the 
penalties which follow childish scavenging and adult waste of 
time. The drawers, closets and attics of five houses out of 
ten bear some witness to the tendency. Whole trades maintain 
themselves by ministering to its continued strength, 

Transitoriness is a fact ; instincts do wax and wane ; but 
the waning is far less frequent, far more gradual and far 
later in its onset, than the ordinary descriptions of stages, 
epochs, fluctuations and the like would lead one to believe. 
Much of human behavior can be explained by certain original 
tendencies which wane slowly or not at all, except in sa far 
as the consequences of their manifestations stamp them out. 
or the law of disuse slowly weakens them. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Value and Use of Original Tendencies 

At the beginning of this volume it was stated that human 
welfare required that some original tendencies be cherished, 
that some be redirected or modified, and that others be elim- 
inated outright. 

To most of my readers it will seem evident that original 
nature includes tendencies that are good, tendencies that can 
be used for good, and tendencies that had best be abolished. 
The fact that maternal affection, curiosity and cruelty are 
original tendencies would seem sufficient proof of the statement, 
but it has been denied by two extreme views, one that original 
nature is essentially wrong and untrustworthy, the other that 
original nature is always right. The former view, though 
probably as fair as the latter, is now in universal disrepute and 
need not detain us. The latter, by being attractive to senti- 
mentalists, absolutist philosophers and believers in a distorted 
and fallacious form of the doctrine of evolution, has been of 
great influence upon educational theories. Since it is also 
championed to some extent by so eminent a student of human 
nature as Stanley Hall, it must be considered seriously. 

THE DOCTRINE OF NATURE^ INFALLIBILITY 

By the 'Nature is Right' doctrine, the actual terminus of 
evolution is the moral end of human action. What is going to 
be, is right. Our duty is to abstain from interfering with 
nature, supposing such interference to be possible. A child 
should be trained up in the way that the inner impulse of 

116 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 1 17 

development leads him to go. The summum bomim for the 
race is to live out its own evolution with interest and freedom. 
No stage to which nature impels, should by human artifice be 
either hastened or prolonged, lest the magic order be disturbed. 
The ideal for humanity is to be sought in its natural outcome, 
in what it of itself tends to be, irrespective of training. Human 
effort should be to let the inner forces of development do their 
perfect work. 

This doctrine that the unlearned tendencies of man are 
right is assumed in a vague way as a support for one or another 
proposal about educational practice more often than it is stated 
straightforwardly as a general principle. But the quotations 
that follow will serve as a composite statement and illustration 
of it as a general principle. 

"No influence that works in opposition to this development 
(that of original nature) and to the law of the inheritance of 
racial traits in order can ever reach a suitable adaptation, but 
only disturbs the natural course of development, and creates 
abnormal, misdirected endeavor." [Schneider, '82, p. 489] 

"Only here (in the original tendencies or 'natural develop- 
ment' of the individual and of the race) can we hope to find 
true norms against the tendencies to precocity in home, school, 
church, and civilization generally, and also to establish criteria 
by which to both diagnose and measure arrest and retardation 
in the individual and the race." [G. Stanley Hall, '04, Pre- 
face, p. viii] 

Guillet says : "Since it is the order of nature that the new 
organism should pass through certain developmental stages, it 
behooves us to study nature's plan, and to seek rather to aid 
than to thwart it. For nature must be right ; there is no higher 
criterion." [Guillet, '00, p. 427] 

To these extraordinary renunciations of any hope of improv- 
ing upon the unguided course of inner growth common sense 



Il8 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

at once opposes the facts that lying, stealing, torturing, ignor- 
ance, irrational fears, and a hundred weaknesses and vices, are 
original in man. 

Schneider, Stanley Hall, and others who have proclaimed 
that 'Nature is right' and used the doctrine as a pillar of their 
theories of education, were not ignorant of these facts. Nor 
did they forget such facts temporarily in zeal for their attrac- 
tive doctrine. They offer, or could offer, three explanations 
of these apparently wrong original tendencies in man. 

First, an original tendency that is undesirable, in and of 
itself, may be the prerequisite of some desirable tendency and 
hence, on the whole, desirable. 

"Children," writes Burk, "frequently persist in following 
some strange, useless or even savage interests quite foreign to 
our civilization . . . these strange and useless experiences 
nevertheless may be essential as a platform out of which a 
higher coordination, useful for modern life, may be reached. 
The intermediate stage or level may be useless or even inimical 
to our civilization, but yet as a link in evolution, be none the 
less essential." [Burk, F. L., '98, p. 24] 

In Stanley Hall's words, "Many an impulse seeks expres- 
sion, which seems strong for a time, but which will never be 
heard of later. Its function is to stimulate the next higher 
power that can only thus be provoked to development, in order 
to direct, repress or supersede it. . . . Nearly every latency 
must be developed, or else some higher power, that later tempers 
and coordinates it, lacks normal stimulus to develop." ['04, 
vol. 2, pp. 90-91] Thus the miscellaneous and apparently 
futile finger movements of babies may be a necessary fore-run- 
ner of reaching, grasping, holding, and the like. 

Second, An original tendency, undesirable in and of itself, 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 1 19 

may on the whole be desirable because it is the necessary corre- 
late or result of some desirable tendency. 

The tendency to righteous anger may involve a tendency to 
mere raging. Love may be unable to exist in full measure 
without jealousy of the irrational, cruel and mean sort. In 
Stanley Hall's opinion, "An able-bodied young man, who can 
not fight physically, can hardly have a high and true sense of 
honor, and is generally a milk-sop, a lady-boy, or a sneak." 
['04, vol. 1, p. 217] 

Third, a tendency undesirable in and of itself would, on the 
whole, be desirable, if by its presence in early life, man is pro- 
tected from the same tendency later. 

If being a thief at five and a bully at ten kept one from 
being a thief and a bully from twenty-five to seventy, these 
original tendencies would of course be desirable as lesser evils. 
That original tendencies do sometimes thus preventively inocu- 
late and immunize has been asserted by Stanley Hall and 
many of his followers. 

The extent to which this doctrine of immunization by 
early wrong-doing is carried is well illustrated in the following 
recommendations of selfishness, greed, lying and cheating by 
Kline and France : — 

"Do we believe that the child recapitulates the history of 
the race? If so we may not be surprised to find the passion 
for property-getting a natural one, nor that the child lies, 
cheats and steals to acquire it or that selfishness rules the child's 
actions. Selfishness is the cornerstone of the struggle for 
existence, deception is at its very foundation, while the acquir- 
ing of property has been the most dominant factor in the his- 
tory of men and nations. These passions of the child are but 
the pent up forces of the greed of thousands of years. They 
must find expression and exercise, if not in childhood, later. 
Who knows but what our misers are not those children grown 



120 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

up whom fond mothers and fathers forced into giving away 
their playthings, into the doing of unselfish acts, in acting out 
a generosity which was neither felt nor understood. Not to 
let these activities have their play in childhood is to run a great 
risk. It does no good to make the child perform moral acts 
when it does not appreciate what right and wrong mean, and 
to punish a child for not performing acts which his very nature 
compels him to do, is doing that child positive injury. 

During the period of adolescence, generosity and altruism 
spring up naturally. Then why try to force the budding 
plant into blossom? Instruct them by all means, teach them 
the right; but if this fails, do not punish, but let the child be 
selfish, let him lie and cheat, until these forces spend themselves. 
Do not these experiences of the child give to man in later life 
a moral virility?" ['99, p. 455] 

DEFECTS IN MAN'S ORIGINAL NATURE 

These three subsidiary hypotheses (that an intrinsically 
undesirable tendency may be! the prerequisite of some desirable 
tendency, or its necessary correlate, or the means of immuniza- 
tion from a similar but worse tendency later) do not, how- 
ever, supply all the shortcomings of the 'Nature is Right' doc- 
trine. The first and second of them, while very probably true 
of certain tendencies, do not provide greed, insane rage, cruelty, 
and many others, with any adequate excuse. The experience 
of families, schools and states, has not found that interference 
with these instincts withers the hopes of any noble traits. Nor 
does present knowledge of the relations of mental traits lead 
us to expect that these instincts are necessarily bound to any 
compensating advantages. The great majority of the original 
tendencies which can be defended by the hope that they are 
bound as cause or effect or correlative to some valuable quality 
of mind are either such as no wise judge would consider wrong 
— for example, general activity of body and of mind ; or such 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 12* 

as produce the good quality only by being interfered with, re- 
directed, modified in situation, response, or both. 

The third hypothesis, that rage, teasing, bullying, envy, 
neglect of absolute values, and the like, will, if denied exercise, 
inhibited or redirected when they appear as man's original 
nature decrees, be all the more potent and mischievous in the 
long run, is then necessary if nature's infallibility is to be 
saved. It was in fact invented to save it. 

Very strong evidence should be required before believing 
that the exercise of any function thus weakens it. For such 
mental immunization is directly contrary to one of the most 
nearly universal laws of mental life, the law of exercise. Still 
stronger evidence should be required before believing that the 
exercise of any function to which an original impulse leads 
weakens it. For the exercise of an original tendency is almost 
always satisfying, other things being equal. Hence mental 
immunization by an early attack is here directly contrary to 
the law of effect. 

There can, indeed, be no doubt that the laws of habit are 
the rule, that ordinarily the exercise of any tendency with satis- 
fying or indifferent results strengthens the tendency, and that 
an original tendency will persist unless it is transitory by nature, 
is prevented from functioning, or is checked or redirected by 
other forces. If immunization by early indulgence occurs at 
all, it occurs as an exception for which adequate special reasons 
must be given. 

No one has given adequate special reasons, or indeed rea- 
sons of any kind worth mentioning. In fact, Stanley Hall 
himself often abandons the doctrine and returns to the 
orthodox theory that education must redirect original tenden- 
cies. For example, he writes that we shall "utilize most of the 
energy now wasted in crime by devising more wholesome and 



122 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

natural expressions for the instincts that motivate it" ['04, vol 
1, p. 342]. Anger's "culture requires proper selection of ol> 
jects and great transformation, but never extermination." 
['04, vol. 1, p. 355] "The popular idea, that youth must have 
its fling, implies the need of greatly and sometimes suddenly 
widened liberty, which nevertheless needs careful supervision 
and wise direction." ['04, vol. 2, pp. 89-90] Hall even says 
flatly that "the spontaneous expressions of this best age and 
condition of life (youth in college), with no other occupation 
than their own development, have shown reversions as often as 
progress." ['04, vol. 2, p. 399] 

Finally it must be said that under the pressure of obvious 
facts even the most ardent advocates of nature's infallibility 
always somewhere give the doctrine up. So Stanley Hall 
writes : — 

. . . "now another remove from nature seems to be made 
necessary by the manifold knowledges and skills of our highly 
complex civilization . . . the child must be subjected to special 
disciplines and be apprenticed to the higher qualities of adult- 
hood, for he is not only a product of nature, but a candidate 
for a highly developed humanity. To many, if not most, of 
the influences here there can be at first but little inner response. 
. . . The wisest requirements seem to the child more or less 
alien, arbitrary, heteronomous, artificial, falsetto." ['04, Pref- 
ace, p. xii] 

[Guillet, who asserts that 'Nature must be right,' later un- 
consciously recants fully. "These instincts, then, which every 
child has . . . must be turned into worthy grooves. Not 
suppression, but a generous control." ['00, p. 445] 

The imperfections and misleadings of original nature are 
in fact many and momentous. The common good requires 
that each child learn countless new lessons and unlearn a large 
fraction of his natural birthright. The main reason for this 



THE USE OF ORIGINAL TENDENCIES 123 

is that original equipment is archaic, adapting the human 
animal for the life that might be led by a family group of wild 
men in the woods, amongst the brute forces of land, water, 
wind, rain, plants, animals, and other groups of wild men. The 
life to which original nature adapts man is probably far more 
like the life of the wolf or ape, than like the life that now is, as 
a result of human art, habit and reasoning, perpetuating them- 
selves in language, tools, buildings, books and customs. 

It is a useful, if trite, exercise to consider this enormous 
gap between the fate of man left to what the human germ 
plasm has learned and the opportunity to which the learning 
of men themselves calls each new generation. How easily we 
revert to a nearly simian brutality when the records and 
restraints of civilization fail is the best proof and illustration 
of the unfitness of original nature to rule the behavior of man. 

Other illustrations in abundance can be found of the archaic 
unreason of original nature, or, more scientifically, of the 
thoroughgoing transformation which life undergoes in propor- 
tion as human reason works back upon the conditions of things 
and the wants of men. By the germs' decree we fear, not the 
carriers of malaria and yellow fever, but thunder and the dark ; 
we pity, not the gifted youth debarred from education, but the 
beggar's bloody sore; we are less excited by a great injustice 
than by a little blood; we suffer more from such scorn as un- 
tipped waiters, cabmen, and barbers show, than from our own 
idleness, ignorance and folly. 

It is also true that even to a brute's life in the woods human 
instincts are not perfectly adapted, or without gross errors. 
To exist, a species needs to behave so as to exist, but not so as 
to exist well. A species can, and most species do, make many 
blunders in life. 'Good' means in evolution only 'good enough 



124 THE ORIGINAL NATURE OF MAN 

to keep the species from elimination/ and 'best' means only the 
surest aids to survival that have happened to happen. 

The original tendencies of man have not been right, are not 
right, and probably never will be right. By them alone few of 
the best wants in human life would have been felt, and fewer 
still satisfied. Nor would the crude, conflicting, perilous wants 
which original nature so largely represents and serves, have 
had much more fulfilment. Original nature has achieved what 
goodness the world knows as a state achieves order, by killing, 
confining or reforming some of its elements. It progresses, 
not by laissez faire, but by changing the environment in which 
it operates and by renewedly changing itself in each generation. 
Man is now as civilized, rational and humane as he is because 
man in the past has changed things into shapes more satisfying, 
and changed parts of his own nature into traits more satisfying, 
to man as a whole. Man is thus eternally altering himself to 
suit himself. His nature is not right in his own eyes. Only 
one thing in it, indeed, is unreservedly good, the power to make 
it better. This power, the power of learning or modification 
in favor of the satisfying, the capacity represented by the law 
of effect, is the essential principle of reason and right in the 
world. 



PART II 

The Psychology of Learning 

chapter x 

The Laws of Learning in Animals 

The intellect, character and skill possessed by any man are\ 
the product of certain original tendencies and the training 
which they have received. His eventual nature is the develop- 
ment of his original nature in the environment which it has 
had. Human nature in general is the result of the original 
nature of man, the laws of learning, and the forces of nature,- 
amongst which man lives and learns. 

SAMPLES OF ANIMAL LEARNING 

The complexities of human learning will in the end be 
best understood if at first we avoid them, examining rather the 
behavior of the lower animals as they learn to meet certain 
situations in changed, and more remunerative, ways. 

Let a number of chicks, say six to twelve days old, be 
kept in a yard (YY of Figure 26) adjoining which is a pen 
or maze (A B C D E of Figure 26). A chick is taken from 
the group and put in alone at A. It is confronted by a 
situation which is, in essence, Confining zvalls and the absence 
of the other chicks, food and familiar surroundings. It reacts 
to the situation by running around, making loud sounds, 

12$ 



126 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



and jumping at the walls. When it jumps at the walls, it 
has the discomforts of thwarted effort, and when it runs 
to B, or C, or D, it has a continuation of the situation just 
described; when it runs to E, it gets out and has the satis- 
faction of being with the other chicks, of eating, and of being 
in its usual habitat. If it is repeatedly put in again at A, 




Fig. 26. 

one finds that it jumps and runs to B or C less and less 
often, until finally its only act is to run to D, E, and 
out. It has formed an association, or connection, or bond, 
between the situation due to its removal to A and the response 
of going to E. In common language, it has learned to go 
to E when put at A — has learned the way out. The decrease 
in the useless running and jumping and standing still finds 
a representative in the decreasing amount of time taken by 
the chick to escape. The two chicks that formed this par- 



THE LAWS OF LEARNING IN ANIMALS 



12/ 



ticular association, for example, averaged three and a half 
minutes (one about three and the other about four) for their 
first five trials, but came finally to escape invariably within 
five or six seconds. 

The following schemes represent the animal's behavior 
(1) during an early trial and (2) after the association has 
been fully formed — after it has learned the way out perfectly. 

(i) 

Behavior in an Early Trial. 

Resulting States of Affairs. 
Annoying continuation of the 
situation and thwarting of the 
inner tendencies. 



Situation. 


Responses. 


As described 


To chirp, etc. 


above, in the 




text 


To jump at various 




places. 




To run to B. 




« « « q 




« a st Y) 



" E. 



Satisfying company, food and 
surroundings. 



(2) 

Behavior in a Trial After Learning. 
Situation. Responses. Resulting States of Affairs. 

Same as in (1). To run to E. Satisfying as above. 

A graphic representation of the progress from an early 
trial to a trial after the association has been fully formed is 
given in the following figures, in which the dotted lines repre- 
sent the path taken by a turtle in his fifth (Fig. 27) and 
fiftieth (Fig. 28) experiences in learning the way from the 
point A to his nest. The straight lines represent walls of 
boards. Besides the useless movements, there were, in the 
fifth trial, useless stoppings. The time taken to reach the 



I2S 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



nest in the fifth trial was seven minutes ; in the fiftieth, thirty- 
five seconds. The figures represent typical early and late 
trials, chosen from a number of experiments on different 



A 






.'" .. 


.-• 


.- zz> 


^^"^ 


# . . . . - 


-. • • 
















7^ 




' 


















i 












\ 






1 














1 


Nest 





Fig. 27. The path taken by a turtle in finding his way 
from A to his nest, in his 5th trial. 

individuals in different situations, by Dr. R. M. Yerkes, to 
whom I am indebted for permission to use these figures. 

Let us next examine a somewhat more ambitious perform- 
ance than the mere discovery of the proper path by a chick 



A 






r^ 


* " 












.' 


.•■" 








■ 


1 






1 


Nest 



Fig. 28. The path taken by a turtle in finding his way 
from A to his nest, in his 50th trial. 



THE LAWS OF LEARNING IN ANIMALS I29 

or turtle. If we take a box twenty by fifteen by twelve 
inches, replace its cover and front side by bars an inch apart, 
and make in this front side a door arranged so as to fall 
open when a wooden button inside is turned from a vertical 
to a horizontal position, we shall have means to observe such. 
A kitten, three to six months old, if put in this box when 
hungry, a bit of fish being left outside, reacts as follows: 
It tries to squeeze through between the bars, claws at the 
bars and at loose things in and out of the box, stretches its 
paws out between the bars, and bites at its confining walls. 
Some one of all these promiscuous clawings, squeezings, and 
bitings turns round the wooden button, and the kitten gains 
freedom and food. By repeating the experience again and 
again, the animal gradually comes to omit all the useless 
clawings, and the like, and to manifest only the particular 
impulse (e. g., to claw hard at the top of the button with 
the paw, or to push against one side of it with the nose) 
which has resulted successfully. It turns the button around 
without delay whenever put in the box. It has formed an 
association between the situation, confinement in a box of a 
certain appearance, and the response of clawing at a certain 
part of that box in a certain definite way. Popularly speaking, 
it has learned to open a door by turning a button. To the 
vi linitiated observer the behavior of the six kittens that thus 
freed themselves from such a box would seem wonderful and 
quite unlike their ordinary accomplishments of finding their 
way to their food or beds, but the reader will realize that the 
activity is of just the same sort as that displayed by the chick 
in the pen. A certain situation arouses, by virtue of accident 
or, more often, instinctive equipment, certain responses. One 
of these happens to be an act appropriate to secure freedom. 
It is stamped in in connection with that situation. Here the act 



I30 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

is clawing at a certain spot instead of running to E, and is 
selected from a far greater number of useless acts. 

In the examples so far given there is a certain congruity 
between the 'set' associated with the situation and the learning. 
The act which lets the cat out is hit upon by the cat while, 
as we say, trying to get out, and is, so to speak, a likely 
means of release. But there need be no such congruity be- 
tween the 'set' and the learning. If we confine a cat, opening 
the door and letting it out to ,get food only when it scratches 
itself, we shall, after enough trials, find the cat scratching 
itself the moment it is put into the box. Yet in the first 
trials it did not scratch itself in order to get out, or indeed 
until after it had given up the unavailing clawings and squeez- 
ings, and stopped to rest. The association is formed with 
such an 'unlikely' or 'incongruous' response as that of scratch- 
ing, or licking, or (in the case of chicks) pecking at the 
wing to dress it, as truly as with a response which original 
nature or previous habit has put in connection with the set 
of the organism toward release, food, and company. 

The examples chosen so far show the animal forming 
a single association, but such may be combined into series. 
For instance, a chick learns to get out of a pen by climbing 
up an inclined plane. A second pen is then so arranged that 
the chick can, say by walking up a slat and through a hole 
in the wall, get from it into pen No. 1. After a number of 
trials the chick will, when put in pen No. 2, go at once to pen 
No. 1, and thence out. A third pen is then so arranged that 
the chick, by forming another association, can get from it 
to pen No. 2, and so on. In such a series of associations the 
response of one brings the animal into the situation of the next, 
thus arousing its response, and so on to the end. Three chicks 
thus learned to go through a sort of long labyrinth without 



THE LAWS OF LEARNING IN ANIMALS 131 

tnistakes, the 'learning' representing twenty-three associations. 
The learning of the chick, turtle and kitten in the cases 
quoted is characterized negatively by the absence of inferential, 
ratiocinative thinking ; and indeed by the absence of effective 
use of 'ideas' of any sort. Were the reader confined in a 
maze or cage, or left at some distance from home, his re- 
sponses to these situations would almost certainly include many 
ideas, judgments, or thoughts about the situation; and his 
acts would probably in large measure be led up to or 'mediated' 
by such sequences of ideas as are commonly called reasoning. 
Between the annoying situation and the response which relieves 
the annoyance there might for the reader well intervene an 
hour of inner consideration, thought, planning and the like. 
But there is no evidence that any ideas about the maze, the 
cage, the food, or anything else, were present to determine 
the acts of the chicks or kittens in question. Their responses 
were made directly to the situation as sensed, not via ideas 
suggested by it. The three cases of learning quoted are 
adequately accounted for as the strengthening and weakening 
of bonds between a situation present to sense and responses 
in the nervous system which issue then and there in movement. 
The lower animals do occasionally show signs of ideas and 
of their influence on behavior, but the great bulk of their 
learning has been found explainable by such direct binding 
of acts to situations, unmediated by ideas. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF ANIMAL LEARNING 

These cases, and the hundreds of which they are typical/- 
show the laws of readiness, exercise, and effect, uncomplicated 
by any pseudo-aid from imitation, ideo-motor action, or superior 
faculties of inference. There are certain states of affairs which 



13^ THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

the animal welcomes and does nothing to avoid — its satisfiers. 
There are others which it is intolerant of and rejects, doing one 
thing or another until relieved from them. Of the bonds which 
the animal's behavior makes between a situation and responses 
those grow stronger which are accompanied by satisfying 
states of affairs, while those accompanied by annoyance weaken 
and disappear. Exercise strengthens and disuse weakens 
bonds. Such is the sum and substance of the bulk of animal 
learning. 

These cases exemplify also five characteristics of learning 
which are secondary in scope and importance only to the laws 
of readiness, exercise, and effect. 

The first is the fact of multiple response to the same ex- 
ternal situation. The animal reacts to being confined in the 
pen in several ways, and so has the possibility of selecting for 
future connection with that situation one or another of these 
ways. Its own inner state changes when jumping at the 
wall at B produces a drop back into the pen, so that it then 
is less likely to jump again — more likely to chirp and run. 
Running to C and being still confronted with the confining 
walls may arouse an inner state which impels it to turn and run 
back. So one after another- of the responses which, by origi- 
nal nature or previous learning, are produced by the confining 
walls plus the failure of the useless chirpings, jumpings and 
runnings, are made. 

This principle of Multiple Response or Varied Reaction 
will be found to pervade at least nine-tenths of animal and 
human learning. As ordinarily interpreted, it is not universal, 
since, even if only one response is made, the animal may 
change its behavior — that is, learn — either by strengthening 
the connection so as to make that response more surely, more 
quickly and after a longer interval of disuse; or by weakening 



THE LAWS OF LEARNING IN ANIMALS 133 

the connection so as to be more likely to do nothing at all 
in that situation, inactivity being a variety of response which 
is always a possible alternative. If we interpret variety of 
reaction so as to include the cases where an animal either 
makes one active response or is inactive — that is, either alters 
what it was doing when the situation began to act, or does 
not alter what it was doing — the principle of varied response^ 
is universal in learning. 

The second of the five subsidiary principles is what we x 
may call the law of the learner's Set or Attitude or Adjust- 
ment or Determination. The learning cannot be described 
adequately in a simple equation involving the pen and a chick 
taken abstractly. The chick, according to his age, hunger, 
vitali-ty, sleepiness and the like, may be in one or another 
attitude toward the external situation. A sleepier and less 
hungry chick will, as a rule, be 'set' less toward escape-move- 
ments when confined; its neurones involved in roaming, per- 
ceiving companions and feeding will be less ready to act; 
it will not, in popular language, 'try so hard to' get out or 
'care so much about' being out. As Woodworth says in com- 
menting upon similar cases of animal learning: 

"In the first place we must assume in the animal an 
adjustment or determination of the psycho-physical mechanism 
toward a certain end. The animal desires, as we like to 
say, to get out and to reach the food. Whatever be his con- 
sciousness, his behavior shows that he is, as an organism, set 
in that direction. This adjustment persists till the motor 
reaction is consummated; it is the driving force in the unre- 
mitting efforts of the animal to attain the desired end. His 
reactions are, therefore, the joint result of the adjustment 
and of stimuli from various features of the cage. Each single 
reaction tends to become associated with the adjustment." 
[Ladd and Woodworth, 'n, p. 551.] 



T34 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

The principle that in any external situation, the responses 
made are the product of the 'set' or 'attitude' of the animal, 
that the satis fyingness or annoyingness produced by a response 
is conditioned by that attitude, and that the 'successful' response 
is by the law of effect connected with that attitude as well 
as with the external situation per se — is general. Any process 
of learning is conditioned by the mind's 'set' at the time. 

Animal learning shows also the fact, which becomes of 
tremendous moment in human learning, that one or another 
element of the situation may be prepotent in determining the 
response. For example, the cats with which I experimented, 
would, after a time, be determined by my behavior more than 
by other features of the general situations of which that 
behavior was a part; so that they could then learn, as they 
could not have done earlier, to form habits of response to 
signals which I gave. Similarly, a cat that has learned to get 
out of a dozen boxes — in each case by pulling some loop, 
turning some bar, depressing a platform, or the like — will, 
in a new box, be, as we say, 'more attentive to' small objects 
on the sides of the box than it was before. The connections 
made may then be, not absolutely with the gross situation as 
a total, but predominantly with some element or elements of 
it. Thus, it makes little or no difference whether the box 
from which a cat has learned to escape by turning a button, 
is faced North, South, East or West; and not much difference 
if it is painted ten per cent blacker or enlarged by a fifth. 
The cat will operate the mechanism substantially as well as 
it did before. It is, of course, the case that the animals do not, 
as a thoughtful man might do, connect the response with 
perfect strictness just to the one essential element of the 
situation. They can be much more easily confused by vari- 
ations in the element's concomitants; and in certain cases 



THE LAWS OF LEARNING IN ANIMALS 135 

many of the irrelevant concomitants have to be supplied to 
enable them to give the right response. Nevertheless they 
clearly make connections with certain parts or elements or 
features of gross total situations. Even in the lower animals, 
that is, we find that the action of a situation is more or less 
separable into the action of the elements that compose it— 
that even they illustrate the general Law of Partial Activity* 
— that a part or element or aspect of a situation may be pre- 
potent in causing response, and may have responses bound 
more or less exclusively to it regardless of some or all of its 
accompaniments. 

If a cat which has never been confined in a box or cage 
of any sort is put into a box like that described a few pages 
back, it responds chiefly by trying to squeeze through the 
openings, clawing at the bars and at loose objects within the 
box, reaching out between the bars, and pulling at anything 
then within its grasp. In short, it responds to this artificial 
situation as it would by original nature to confinement, as 
in a thicket. If a cat which has learned to escape from a 
number of such boxes by manipulating various mechanical 
contrivances, is confined in a new box, it responds to it by 
a mixture of the responses originally bound to confining ob- 
stacles and of those which it has learned to make to boxes 
like the new one. 

In both cases it illustrates the Law of Assimilation or 
Analogy that to any situations, which have no special original 
or acquired response of their own, the response made will be 
that which by original or acquired nature is connected with 
some situation which they resemble. For S 2 to resemble Si 
means for it to arouse more or less of the sensory neurones 
which Si would arouse, and in more or less the same fashion. 
* Or, better, the law of piecemeal activity, or activity by parts. 



I36 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

The last important principle which stands out clearly in 
the learning of the lower animals is that which I shall call 
Associative Shifting. The ordinary animal 'tricks' in response 
to verbal signals are convenient illustrations. One, for ex- 
ample, holds up before a cat a bit of fish, saying, "Stand 
up." The cat, if hungry enough, and not of fixed contrary 
habit, will stand up in response to the fish. The response, 
however, contracts bonds also with the total situation, and 
hence to the human being in that position giving that signal 
as well as to the fish. After enough trials, by proper arrange- 
ment, the fish can be omitted, the other elements of the 
situation serving to evoke the response. Association may later 
be further shifted to the oral signal alone. With certain 
limitations due to the necessity of getting an element of a 
situation attended to, a response to the total situation ABC 
D E may thus be shifted to B C D E to C D E, to D E, 
to E. Moreover, by adding to the situation new elements 
F, G, H, etc., we may, subject to similar limitations, get any 
response of which a learner is capable associated with any 
situation to which he is sensitive. Thus, what was at the 
start utterly without power to evoke a certain response may 
come to do so to perfection. Indeed, the situation may be 
one which at the start would have aroused an exactly opposite 
response. So a monkey can be taught to go to the top of his 
cage whenever you hold a piece of banana at the bottom 
of it. 

y^ These simple, semi-mechanical phenomena — multiple re- 
sponse, the cooperation of the animal's set or attitude with 
the external situation, the predominant activity of parts or 
elements of a situation, the response to new situations as to 
the situations most like them, and the shifting of a response 
from one situation to another by gradually changing a sit- 



THE LAWS OF LEARNING IN ANIMALS 1 37 

uation without disturbing the response to it — which animal 
learning* discloses, are the fundamentals of human learning/ 
also. They are, of course, much complicated in the more 
advanced stages of human learning, such as the acquisition 
of skill with the violin, or of knowledge of the calculus, or 
of inventiveness in engineering. But it is impossible to under- 
stand the subtler and more planful learning of cultivated men 
without clear ideas of the forces which make learning possible 
in its first form of directly connecting some gross bodily 
response with a situation immediately present to the senses. 
Moreover, no matter how subtle, complicated and advanced 
a form of learning one has to explain, these simple facts — 
the selection of connections by use and satisfaction and their > 
elimination by disuse and annoyance, multiple reaction, the 
mind's set as a condition, piecemeal activity of a situation, 
with prepotency of certain elements in determining the re- 
sponse, response by analogy, and shifting of bonds — will, 
as a matter of fact, still be the main, and perhaps the only, / 
facts needed to explain it 



chapter xi 

Associative Learning in Man 

varieties of learning 

We may roughly distinguish in human learning (i) con- 
nection-forming of the common animal type, as when a ten- 
months-old baby learns to beat a drum, (2) connection- forming 
involving ideas, as when a two-year-old learns to think of 
his mother upon hearing the word, or to say candy when he 
thinks of the thing, (3) analysis or abstraction, as when the 
student of music learns to respond to an overtone in a given 
sound, and (4) selective thinking or reasoning, as when the 
school pupil learns the meaning of a Latin sentence by using 
his knowledge of the rules of syntax and meanings of the 
, word-roots. 

Connection- forming of the common animal type occurs 
frequently in the acquisitions of early infancy, in 'picking up' 
swimming or skating undirected, in increasing the distance 
and precision of one's hits in golf or baseball by the mere try, 
try again method, and in similar unthinking improvement of 
penmanship, acting, literary style, tact in intercourse, and indeed 
almost every sort of ability. Such direct selection of responses 
to fit a situation, irrespective of ideas of either, appears in 
experimental studies of human learning. 

Thus, a person absorbed in reading the copy, holding it in 
mind and getting it typewritten as fast as he can, will modify 
his responses to various elements in the situations met so 

MS 



ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING IN MAN 139 

as to write more efficiently, without thinking of the element 
in question, or of how he has responded to it, or of the change 
he is actually making in the response. Book indeed says : 'The 
special introspective notes of our learners . . . revealed . . . 
that all new adaptations or short cuts in method were un- 
consciously made, i.e., fallen into by the learners quite unin- 
tentionally . . . The learners suddenly noticed that they were 
doing certain parts of the work in a new and better way, 
then purposely adopted it in the future." ['08, pp. 92 and 
95]. Similarly a person whose general aim is to solve a 
mechanical puzzle may hit upon the solution, or some part 
of it, in the course of random fumbling, may hit upon it 
sooner in the next trial, and so progress in the learning — all 
with little help from ideas about the puzzle or his own move- 
ments. Ruger, who studied the process of learning in the 
case of such puzzles, quotes ['10, p. 21 ff.] samples of such 
approach to learning of the animal type, such as; "I have no 
idea in the world how I did it. I remember moving the loop 
of the heart around the end of the bar, and the two pieces 
suddenly came apart." He says, in a general account of this 
matter : 

"The behavior of human subjects in the puzzle tests . . . 
showed many of the features usually accredited to the behavior 
of animals in contrast with that of human beings. The times 
for repeated successes in a number of cases remained high and 
fluctuating, the time for later trials in a given series being 
often greater than that for the first success. Acts which 
made no change in the situation whatever were at times re- 
peated indefinitely and without modification. In successive 
trials of a series, after an essential step toward a solution had 
been performed correctly, it was reversed and done over several 
times with irrelevant movements interspersed before the subject 
passed on to the next step ... In practically all of the 



140 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

cases random manipulation played some part and, in many- 
cases, a very considerable part in the gaining of success." 
[ibid., p. 9.] 

If the reader will trace, fairly rapidly, the outline of, say, 
a six-pointed star, looking only at the reflection of it and his 
hand given by a mirror, he will get a useful illustration of the 
animal-like learning by the gradual elimination of wrong re- 
sponses. As Starch has shown ['10], one may make, again 
and again, responses which thought could have told us were 
wrong. As he says ['10, p. 21], " Apparently the only way 
to reach the line is to keep on trying till one succeeds." 

Learning is indeed theoretically, and perhaps in fact, pos- 
sible without any other factors than a situation, an animal 
whose inner conditions it can change, the retention of certain 
of these conditions in the animal because they favor, and the 
abandonment of certain others of them because they disturb, 
the life-processes of the neurones concerned at the time. The 
bare fact of selective association of response to situation is 
all that is needed for certain cases of learning. 

Other cases follow the same simple associative plan, save 
that ideas are terms in the associated series. The familiar 
mental arithmetic drills of childhood, wherein we were made 
to "Take 6, add 5, subtract 2, divide by 3, multiply by 5, add 
9, divide by 6, and give the answer," differ from the long 
maze through which the chicks were put, essentially in that 
the situations, after the first 'Take 6,' and the responses, until 
final announcement of the answer, include ideas as components. 

The formation of connections involving ideas accounts for 
a major fraction of 'knowledge' in the popular sense of the 
term. Words heard and seen, with their meanings, events 
with their dates, things with their properties and values, 
numerical problems, such as 9 + 3 or 36 -f- 4, with their 



ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING IN MAN I4 1 

answers, persons with their characteristics, places with their 
adjuncts, and the like; make up the long list of situation- 
response bonds where one term, at least, is the inner condition 
in a man which we call an idea or judgment or the like. 

\ Man learns also to isolate and respond to elements which 
for the lower animals remain inextricably imbedded in gross 
total situations. The furniture, conversation.or behavior which 
to a dog are an undefined impression (such as the reader would 
have from looking at an unfamiliar landscape upside down 
or hearing a babel of Chinese speeches, or being submerged 
ten feet under water for the first time, or being half awakened 
in an unfamiliar room by an earthquake), become to man 
intelligible aggregates of separate 'things/ 'words,' or 'acts,' 
further defined and constituted by color, number, size, shape, 
loudness, and the many elements which man analyzes out of 
the gross total situations of life for individual response. 

Of this analytic learning and also of the longer or shorter 
inferential and selective series, fuller account will be given 
later. The simpler connection-forming, without or with ideas 
as features of the situation or the response, is obviously the 
primary fact and will be considered first. 

THE LAWS OF HABIT 

This sort of learning, more or less well named connection- 
forming, habit-formation, associative memory and association, 
is an obvious consequence of the laws of readiness, exercise, 
and effect described in Chapters IV and VI of the previous 
discussion. By it things are put together and kept together in 
behavior which have gone together, often enough or with 
enough resulting satisfaction, and are put apart and kept apart 
which have been separated long enough, or whose connection 



I4 2 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

has produced enough annoyance. The laws of connection^ 
forming or association or habit furnish education with two 
obvious general rules: — (i) Put together what should go to- 
gether and keep apart what should not go together. (2) 
Reward desirable connections and make undesirable connec-^ 
tions produce discomfort. Or, in combined form : Exercise \ 
and reward desirable connections; prevent or punish undesir-^ 
able connections. These psychological laws and educational 
rules for the learning process are among the elementary prin- 
ciples taught to beginners. They may seem so obvious as not 
to need statement even to beginners, much less here. But 
an examination of the literature of educational theory and 
practice and of the text-books, courses of study, and class- 
room exercises of schools will prove that they are neglected or 
misunderstood and that a thoroughgoing practical use of 
them is almost never made. 

Educational theorists neglect them when they explain learn- 
ing in terms of general faculties, such as attention, interest, 
memory, or judgment, instead of multitudes of connections; 
or appeal to vague forces such as learning, development, adap- 
tation, or adjustment instead of the defined action of the laws 
of exercise and effect; or assume that the mere presence of 
ideas of good acts will produce those acts. 

School practice neglects them when it fancies that know- 
ledge of the addition combinations in higher decades (that is, 
17 + 9, 23 + 5, 3& + 4, etc.) will come by magic after 
7 + 9> 3+5^ 8 + 4^ e tc, are once known; or that the dif- 
ficulty which pupils find in learning 'division by a fraction 
will be prevented or cured by explanation of why one should 
'invert and multiply' or 'multiply by the reciprocal ;' or when it 
gives elaborate drills in declining bonus-a-wn, boni-ae-i, bono- 
ae-o, etc., or in conjugating amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, 



ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING IN MAN 143 

amant, amabam, amabas, amabat, etc. ; or when it uses additional 
lessons and retention in school as stock punishments, or grants 
favors to those who make the most trouble until they are 
granted. 

The laws of readiness, exercise, and effect, operating in 
human associative learning, show the same subsidiary laws 
— multiple response, guidance by a total attitude or set of the 
organism, prepotency of elements, response to new situations 
in accord with already existing bonds, and the shifting of 
bonds by progressive changes in a situation — which animal , 
learning reveals. But under the conditions provided by the 
different original nature which man learns with, and the dif- 
ferent environment that he learns in, these laws work in 
special ways and produce special effects. Since, moreover, 
their general importance justifies treatment beyond the bare 
descriptions of them given in the previous chapter, each of 
them will be reviewed here. 

Multiple-Response or Varied Reaction. — In the course of 
family and community and school life, and under the influence 
of self-directed education, the 'right' response is often provided 
from the beginning and throughout. Thus, one may not have 
to learn the way to the breakfast table as one path chosen from 
many taken, but may be led from the beginning in the way 
he shall go ; one may be so predisposed beforehand that 9x7 
always leads to 63. There are nevertheless very many cases 
where multiple response is the first step in learning. Try as 
we will to secure the right response at the start and through- 
out, it cannot always be done. In the pronunciation of a 
foreign language, in force and coherence in English com- 
position, or in skill at billiards or tennis, the right responses 
cannot be guaranteed beforehand. Further, where circum- 
stances can with enough care be sq arranged that the selection 



144 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

is simply between the right response and doing nothing at all, 
the labor often outweighs the gain; so that the learner is 
wisely left to make responses of varying degrees of merit, 
from which the better are selected by their intrinsic satisfying- 
ness or the social rewards that they bring. Further, we are 
often careless, or ignorant of means of predisposing the learner 
beforehand to the right act or thought as a sole response, so 
that, for example, many a pupil learns that *4 ~^~ % — 2 on ty 
by finding that 2 rather than y 2 , %2 or 32 is approved by 
his teacher. 

Attitudes, Dispositions, Pre-adjustments or 'Sets/ — It is 
a general law of behavior that the response to any external 
situation is dependent upon the condition of the man, as 
well as upon the nature of the situation; and that, if certain 
conditions in the man are rated as part of the situation, 
the response to it depends upon the remaining conditions in 
the man. Consequently it is a general law of learning that 
the change made in a man by the action of any agent depends 
upon the condition of the man when the agent is acting. 
The condition of the man may be considered under the two 
heads of the more permanent or fixed and the more temporary 
or shifting, attitudes or 'sets.' 

The facts are obvious, though they have been somewhat 
neglected by psychologists in the interest of the supposed 
control of behavior by too simple mechanisms of elementary 
association on the one hand, and too mystical powers of 
consciousness on the other. The situation 'a certain printed 
word' has different effects upon learning, according as the 
child in question is bent upon reading or upon spelling; the 
figures m obviously determine learning differently according 
as the pupil is predisposed to copy, to add, to subtract, or 
to multiply; the same hand provokes one response at cribbage 
and another at whist. 



ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING IN MAN 145 

Carefully observed evidence of the so patent fact of the 
determination of response by the 'set' of the individual has 
been reported in connection with the experimental study of 
the thought-processes by Marbe, Watt, Ach, Messer, Buhler, 
and others. Naturally enough such experimental study finds 
that the course of thought is much more closely determined 
by the attitude established by the instructions given or problem 
set, perhaps an hour previous, than by the particular sensations 
and images that form the bulk of the consciousness of the 
moment. Anybody may easily secure similar evidence for 
himself by observing the differences in the responses which 
a man makes to some one situation after different previous 
instructions, or in the course of different total tasks. 

Still more obvious are the effects upon response of those 
more permanent attitudes or sets in a man which distinguish 
him as Englishman or Frenchman, poet or painter, father of 
a family or celibate, lover or neglecter of music, eager for 
praise or self-sustained, and the like. The response to any 
situation is guided by these enduring adjustments of the man 
as well as by the particular bonds which the situation itself 
has acquired in his life. 

Only a little less obvious should be the fact that the attitude 
or set of the person decides not only what he will do and 
think, but also what he will be satisfied and annoyed by. 
Hunger not only puts certain actual connections in operation : 
it also makes certain conduction units more ready to conduct. 
This conditioning of the action of the law of readiness by the 
man's dispositions appears throughout behavior, though not 
so directly as its conditioning of gross external responses. 
The child 'set' on subtracting is less satisfied by thinking 
of '13' on seeing the I than he would have been had he 
been 'adjusted' to adding. The same state of affairs may be 

TO 



14-6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

welcomed or rejected, and so have opposite effects on learning, 
according as one is 'set' toward learning to shoot to kill or to 
shoot to maim only; or according as one is competing to 
throw a ball to the utmost distance or is competing to 'throw 
a player out at the plate.' The player of high ambitions 
at golf is annoyed by and gradually eliminates shots that 
the more modestly adjusted man would cherish. A slight 
alteration of the rules of a game may dispose players to 
feel wretchedly at a response which their attitude of the year 
before would have made them welcome. The radical actor 
who first decided to play Shylock as a tragic rather than a 
comic character, thereby predisposed himself not only to new 
facial expressions and gestures, but also to new satisfactions 
at tears, hushed anxiety and awe in his audience. When, in 
experiments in association with words, the task being to give 
a synonym for each, one thinks of a word's opposite, there is 
often an even impressive distaste and chagrin. 

The practical importance of attitudes or sets in both func- 
tions — of helping to determine what a man will think or do, 
and what he will be satisfied or annoyed by — should be obvious 
also. The child or man must be put in condition to use the 
situation, and a large part of the theory of education considers 
precisely this problem of getting him permanently disposed 
to respond to the subject-matter of instruction by zeal, open- 
mindedness, scientific method and the like, and temporarily 
disposed to extract the most value from the particular situ- 
ations of a given lesson. The Herbartian 'step' of preparation, 
McMurry's insistence on a definite aim for the pupil, Dewey's 
doctrines that pupils should feel appropriate needs and take 
the problem-solving attitude, and Bagley's demand that ideals 
of general method and procedure should be present as con- 
trolling forces in school drills, are notable illustrations. 



ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING W MAN 147 

The Partial or Piecemeal Activity of a Situation. — One 
of the commonest ways in which conditions within the man 
determine variations in his responses to one same external 
situation is by letting one or another element of the situation 
be prepotent in effect. Such partial or piecemeal activity on the 
part of a situation is, in human learning, the rule. Only 
rarely does man form connections, as the lower animals so 
often do, with a situation as a gross total — unanalyzed, un- 
defined, and, as it were, without relief. He does so occasionally, 
as when a baby, to show off his little trick, requires the same 
room, the same persons present, the same tone of voice and the 
like. Save in early infancy and amongst the feeble-minded, 
however, any situation will most probably act unevenly. Some 
of its elements will produce only the response of neglect; 
others will be bound to only a mild awareness of them; 
others will connect with some energetic response of thought, 
feeling or action, and become positive determiners of the man's 
future. 

The elements which can thus shake off the rest of a 
situation and push themselves to the front may be in man 
far subtler and less conspicuously separate to sense than is 
the case in animals. Perhaps a majority of man's intellectual 
habits are bonds leading from objects which a dog or cat 
would never isolate from the total fields of vision or hearing 
in which they appear. Very many of his intellectual habits 
lead from words and word-series, from qualities of shape, 
number, color, intent, use and the like, and from relations of 
space, time, likeness, causation, subordination and the like — 
elements and relations which would move the lower animals 
only as the component sounds and relations of a symphony 
might move a six-year-old destitute of musical capacity and 
training. 



I4§ THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

Such prepotent determination of the response by some 
element or aspect or feature of a gross total situation is both 
an aid to, and a result of, analytic thinking; it is a main factor 
in man's success with novel situations ; the progress of knowl- 
edge is far less a matter of acquaintance with more and more 
gross situations in the world than it is a matter of insight into 
the constitution and relations of long familiar ones. 

Man's habits of response to the subtler hidden elements, 
especially the relations which are imbedded or held in solu- 
tion in gross situations, lead to consequences so different 
from habits of response to gross total situations or easily 
abstracted elements of them, that the essential continuity from 
the latter to the former has been neglected or even denied. 
Selective thinking, the management of abstractions and re- 
sponsiveness to relations are thus contrasted too sharply with 
memory, habit, and association by contiguity. As has been 
suggested, and as I shall try to prove later, the former also 
are matters of habit, due to the laws of readiness, exercise 
and effect, acting under the conditions of human capacity and 
training, the bonds being in the main with elements or aspects 
of facts and with symbols therefor. 

Assimilation or Response by Analogy. — The laws of in- 
stinct, exercise, and effect account for man's responses to new 
as well as to previously experienced situations. To any new 
situation man responds as he would to some situation like 
it, or like some element of it. In default of any bonds with 
it itself, bonds that he has acquired with situations resembling 
it, act. 

To one accustomed to the older restricted view of habits, 
as a set of hard and fast bonds each between one of a number 
of events happening to a man and some response peculiar to 
that event, it may seem especially perverse to treat the con- 



ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING IN MAN 149 

nections formed with new experiences under the same principle 
as is used to explain those very often repeated, very sure, 
and very invariable bonds, which alone he prefers to call habits. 
The same matter-of-fact point of view, however, which finds 
the laws of exercise and effect acting always, though with 
this or that conditioning set or attitude in the man, and 
with this or that element only of the total external situation 
influential, finds them acting also whether the situation has 
been experienced often, rarely, or never. 

If any learned response is made to the situation — if any- 
thing is done over and above what man's original nature 
provides — it is due to the action of use, disuse, satisfaction 
and discomfort. There is no arbitrary hocus pocus whereby 
man's nature acts in an unpredictable spasm when he is con- 
fronted with a new situation. His habits do not then retire 
to some convenient distance while some new and mysterious 
entities direct his behavior. On the contrary, nowhere are 
the bonds acquired with old situations more surely revealed 
in action than when a new situation appears. The child in 
the presence of a new object, the savage with a new implement, 
manufacturers making steam coaches or motor cars, the school 
boy beginning algebra, the foreigner pronouncing English — 
in all such cases old acquisitions are, together with original 
tendencies, the obvious determiners of response, exemplifying 
the law stated above. 

Were the situation so utterly new as to be in no respect 
like anything responded to before, and also so foreign to man's 
equipment as neither to arouse an original tendency to re- 
sponse nor to be like anything else that could do so, response 
by analogy would fail. For all response would fail. Man's 
nature would simply be forever blind and deaf to the situation 
in question. With such novel experiences as concern human 



15° THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

learning, however, man's responses follow the law that a new 
situation, abcdefghij, is responded to as dbcdelmnop (or 
abcdeqrstu, or fghiabyd, or the like) which has an original 
or learned response fitted to it, would be. 

The law of response by analogy is left somewhat vague 
by the vagueness of the word like.' Tor situation A to be 
like situation B' must be taken to mean, in this case, 'for A to 
arouse in part the same action in the man's neurones as B 
would.' This may or may not be such a likeness as would 
lead the man to affirm likeness in the course of a logical or 
scientific consideration of A and B. For example, diamonds 
and coal-dust are much alike to the scientific consideration of 
a chemist, but it is unlikely that a person who had never 
seen a diamond would call it coal-dust as a result of the 
law of analogy. Science, as we know, is often a struggle 
to educate the neurones which compose man's brain to act 
similarly toward objects to which, by instinct and the or- 
dinary training of life, they would respond quite differently, 
and to act diversely to objects which original nature and 
everyday experience assimilate. 

One obvious set of habits remains to be noted, which 
often substitute for or alternate with, or combine with, re- 
sponse by analogy. Children acquire early, and we all to some 
extent maintain, the habits of response to certain novelties 
in situations by staring in a futile way, saying T don't know/ 
feeling perplexed and lost, and the like. That is, man responds 
to the difference as well as to the likeness in a situation. By 
original nature differences of certain sorts provoke staring, 
curious examination, consternation, and the like; by training, 
differences provoke T don't know,' 'What's that ?' and the like. 
The action of any situation, as was noted in the previous 
volume, is the combined action of its elements. Whatever in 



ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING IN MAN 151 

it has been bound to certain responses acts, by the laws of 
habit, to produce the phenomena of assimilation or response 
by analogy. Its quality or feature of foreignness, baffling- 
ness, true novelty, acts by instinct or habit to produce wonder, 
confessions of inability, and such questionings as have in the 
past brought satisfying results in similar cases. We might 
indeed say that these apparent exceptions to response by an- 
alogy really illustrate it, the new novelty being treated as 
was the old novelty like it. 

Associative Shifting. — The same fact — that the response 
attached by instinct or habit to abcde may be made to abc, or to 
abcfg — accounts for both assimilation and association shifting. 
Starting with response X made to abcde, we may successively 
drop certain elements and add others, until the response is bound 
to fghij, to which perhaps it could never otherwise have 
become connected. Theoretically the formula of progress, 
from abcde to abcdef to abcfg to abfgh to afghi to fghij, 
might result in attaching any response whatever to any situ- 
ation whatever, provided only that we arrange affairs so that 
at every step the response X was more satisfying in its con- 
sequences than balking or doing anything else that the person 
could do. And the actual extent of associative shifting verifies 
this theoretical expectation. It is indeed easy to shift desire 
from intrinsic desiderata to dull pieces of printed paper, to 
shift hatred from truly odious behavior to perfectly smooth 
and genial words like Progressive, Jew, or Labor Union! 

Most important of all cases of this process is the shifting 
of satisfyingness and annoyingness. The physiological mech- 
anisms by which these potent determiners of behavior can win 
attachments utterly beyond, and even opposite to, those which 
original nature prescribes are obscure; but the fact itself is 
sure. Satisfyingness and annoyingness may, under the limit- 



152 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

ing condition noted above, be attached to any situation what- 
ever. So, unhappily, man may come to be made wretched by 
simple out-door sports, children's merriment, spectacles of 
cheerful courage, or the daily panorama of sensory experience. 
So, to his very great gain, man may come to welcome pro- 
ductive labor, excellence for its own sake, consistency and 
verification in thought, or the symbols of welfare in men whose 
faces he can never see. 



chapter xii 

Learning by Analysis and Selection 

analysis and selection in general 

All learning is analytic. ( i ) The bond formed never leads x 
from absolutely the entire situation or state of affairs at the 
moment. (2) Within any bond formed there are always N 
minor bonds from parts of the situation to parts of the re- 
sponse, each of which has a certain degree of independence, 
so that if that part of the situation occurs in a new context, 
that part of the response has a certain* tendency to appear / 
without its old accompaniments. The convenient custom of 
symbolizing a bond as Si ->- R x , or S 2 ->~ R 2 always requires 
interpretation as (S lt + S lb + S u '+ S M . . . S^) -> (R la + 
R 1w + R, . . . R. ). Of the elements of a situation some 

lb lc In ' 

are analyzed out to affect the animal, while others are left; of 
those so abstracted for efficacy on learning and future behavior, 
one will be picked out by one neurone group, another by 
another; although these neurone-groups co-act in making con- 
nection with the further response to the situation, they do 
not co-act indissolubly as an absolute unit, but form prefer- 
ential bonds. 

The bond formed never leads from absolutely the entire 
state of affairs outside the animal, because the original sensi- 
tivities and attentivenesses always neglect certain elements 
of it, and because acquired interests emphasize the welcome to 
these or others. This abstraction by taking or leaving, and 
by giving and denying special potency over further responses, 

iS3 



154 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

will be described in more detail under Learning by Selection. 
Each total situation-response bond is composed of minor 
bonds from parts of the situation to parts of the response, 
because man's equipment of sensory neurones is such a set of 
analytical organs as it is, and because his connecting neurones 
are such a mechanism as they are for converging and distri- 
buting the currents of conduction set up in these sensory 
neurones. The action set up in sensory neurones by the sight 
of a smiling mother (call it S^) plus whatever accessories the 

n=A 

IX 

n=A 

Fig. 30. 

total situation contains (call these S lb , S lc , etc.) is as a whole 
bound to the baby's response, say, of saying mamma in a 
certain happy way; but the bond from S la to the 'in a certain 
happy way' part of the response is somewhat independent of 
other elements of the total bond. The degree of independence 
varies enormously. At one extreme is such great interde- 
pendence, or intimate co-action, or 'fusion,' in a total bond that 
the element in a new context retains almost nothing (nothing 
apparent to external observation) of the connecting tendency 






XOD = 


bet 


ftzA = 


din 


IX = 

Fig. 29. 


rag 



LEARNING BY ANALYSIS AND SELECTION 155 

it had acquired in the old context. Thus let the reader mem- 
orize the three-pair vocabulary of Fig. 29 so that upon seeing 
anyone of the diagrams in a changed order, as in Fig. 30, he 
can give the associated word. Let him do this as quickly as 
possible. Let him then look at Fig. 31. It is not probable that 
he will connect the letters 't r a n d i g' with it, though the 
elements of which it is composed were, in order of reading, 
connected, in learning the other ten pairs, with t, r, a, n, d, i, g, 
respectively. At the other extreme is an independence or 
separateness of component bonds within the total bond such 
that the element in a new context evokes almost exactly its 
old associates. Thus let a man be taught to shut his eyes and 
open his right hand as a total response to the situation — the 
■field of vision changing from white to red, and simultaneously 
his right hand receiving a sharp prick. Let him also be taught 
to keep his eyes open and to close his right hand as a total 



DR^T=^ 



Fig. 31. 

response to the situation — the field of view changing from white 
to blue and his right hand receiving a cold moist bath. These 
total bonds having been made, it is very likely that if his 
right hand received the same prick while the field of view- 
changed from white to blue, he would open his right hand 
without shutting his eyes. 

Consider now any part of a situation with which, as a 
whole, there is, by original nature or by the action of use, 
disuse, satisfaction and discomfort, some bond. When such a 
part happens alone* or in a new context, it does, as was stated 

* It really never happens alone, being always a part of some total state 
of affairs. The 'alone' means simply that it is a very distinct and pre- 
dominant element of the total situation. 



156 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

under the laws of partial activity and response by analogy, 
what it can. It tends to provoke the total response that was 
bound to it; it tends especially to provoke the minor feature 
of that total response which was especially bound to it. If 
this special preferential bond is strong, it may become the 
dominant feature of the response to a situation composed of 
the old element plus a new context. 

In the lower animals, and in very young children, the situ- 
ations act more as gross totals; and the combination of con- 
nections which we call 'the' bond between the situation and 
its response acts more as a unit. So, to get a dog to perform 
a trick, say of jumping up on a box and begging, at the appro- 
priate verbal command, it may be necessary to have not only the 
words, but also the voice, intonation, sight and smell of the 
one person ; and if he jumps up on the box he may inevitably 
beg. But even in the lower animals cases of decided pref- 
erential bonds of elements in situations with parts of the 
responses thereto may be found in abundance. In all save 
stupid men, the training given by modern life results in the 
formation of an enormous number of bonds with separate 
elements of situations, some of them very, very subtle ele- 
ments. This training results also in the power, given the 
appropriate mental set, of responding alike to an element in 
almost complete disregard of the contexts of the gross total 
situations in which it appears. Indeed, the intellectual life 
of man seems to consist as much in discriminating, abstracting, 
taking apart, as in associating or connecting. His procedure 
in learning geometry, grammar, physics or law seems in 
large measure almost the opposite of his procedure in habit- 
formation and memory. For a first step in the description 
of learning, such learning by analysis does need to be dis- 
tinguished from the mere associative learning, though, as wis: 



LEARNING BY ANALYSIS AND SELECTION 157 

be seen later, the same fundamental mechanism accounts for 
both. 

All man's learning, and indeed all his behavior, is selec- 
five. Man does not, in any useful sense of the words, ever 
absorb, or re-present, or mirror, or copy, a situation uniformly. 
He never acts like a tabula rasa on which external situations 
write each its entire contribution, or a sensitive plate which 
duplicates indiscriminately whatever it is exposed to, or a 
galvanometer which is deflected equally by each and every 
item of electrical force. Even when he seems most subservient 
to the external situation — most compelled to take all that 
it offers and do all that it suggests — it appears that his sense 
organs have shut off important features of the situation from 
influencing him in any way comparable to that open to cer- 
tain others, and that his original or acquired tendencies to 
neglect and attend have allotted only trivial power to some, 
and greatly magnified that of others. 

All behavior is selective, but certain features of it are 
so emphatically so that it has been customary to contrast 
them sharply with the associative behavior which the last 
chapter described. A notable case is the acceptance of some 
one very subtle element of an outside event or an inner train 
of thought to determine further thought and action. In habit- 
formation, memory, and association by contiguity, the psy- 
chologist has declared, the situation determines the responses 
with little interference from the man, the bond leads from 
some one concrete thing or event as it is, and the laws of habit 
explain the process. In the deliberate choice of one or 
another feature of the present thought to determine thought's 
future course, on the other hand, the man directs the energy 
of the situation, the response which the situation itself would 



158 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

be expected to provoke does not come, and new faculties 
or powers of inference or reasoning have to be invoked. 

Such a contrast is almost necessary for a first rough 
description of learning, and the distinction of such highly 
selective thinking from the concrete association of totals is 
useful throughout. We shall see, however, that learning by 
inference is not opposed to, or independent of, the laws of 
habit, but really is their necessary result under the conditions 
imposed by man's nature and training. A closer examination 
of selective thinking will show that no principles beyond 
the laws of readiness, exercise, and effect are needed to explain 
it ; that it is only an extreme case of what goes on in asso- 
ciative learning as described under the 'piecemeal' activity/ 
of situations; and that attributing certain features of learning 
to mysterious faculties of abstraction or reasoning gives no 
real help toward understanding or controlling them. 

It is true that man's behavior in meeting novel problems 
goes beyond, or even against, the habits represented by bonds 
leading from gross total situations and customarily abstracted 
elements thereof. One of the two reasons therefor, however, 
is -simply that the finer, subtle, preferential bonds with subtler 
and less often abstracted elements go beyond, and at times 
against, the grosser and more usual ones. One set is as much 
due to exercise and effect as the other. The other reason 
is that in meeting novel problems the mental set or attitude 
is likely to be one which rejects one after another response 
as their unfitness to satisfy a certain desideratum appears. 
What remains as the apparent course of thought includes 
only a few of the many bonds which did operate, but which, 
for the most part, were unsatisfying to the ruling attitude or 
adjustment. 



LEARNING BY ANALYSIS AND SELECTION 159 

THE SUBTLER FORMS OF ANALYSIS 

Stock cases of learning by the separation of a subtle ele- 
ment from the total situations in which it inheres and the 
acquisition of some constant element of response to it, regard- 
less of its context, are : learning so to handle the number aspect 
of a collection, the shape of an object, the 'place-value' of 
a figure in integral numbers, the megativeness' of negative 
numbers, the pitch of sounds, or the 'amount of heat' in an 
object. The process involved is most easily understood by 
considering the significance of the means employed to 
facilitate it. 

The first of these is having the learner respond to the 
total situations containing the element in question with the 
attitude of piecemeal examination, and with attentiveness to 
one element after another, especially to so near an approxi- 
mation to the element in question as he can already select 
for attentive examination. This attentiveness to one element 
after another serves to emphasize whatever appropriate minor 
bonds from the element in question the learner already pos- 
sesses. Thus, in teaching children to respond to the 'fiveness' 
of various collections, we show five boys or five girls or 
five pencils, and say, "See how many boys are standing up. 
Is Jack the only boy that is standing here? Are there more 
than two boys standing? Name the boys while I point at 
them and count them. (Jack) is one, and (Fred) is one more, 
and (Henry) is one more. Jack and Fred make (two) 
boys. Jack and Fred and Henry make (three) boys." (And 
so on with the attentive counting. ) The mental set 01 attitude 
is directed toward favoring the partial and predominant ac- 
tivity of 'how-many-ness' as far as may be; and the useful 
bonds that the 'fiveness/ the 'one and one and one and one 



l6o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

and one-ness' already have, are emphasized as far as may be. 

The second of the means used to facilitate analysis is 
having the learner respond to many situations each con- 
taining the element in question* (call it A), but with varying 
concomitants (call these V.C.) his response being so directed 
as, so far as may be, to- separate each total response into an 
element bound to the A and an element bound to the V.C. 

Thus the child is led to associate the responses — 'Five 
boys,' 'Five girls/ 'Five pencils,' 'Five inches,' 'Five feet,' 
'Five books,' 'He walked five, steps,' T hit my desk five times,' 
and the like — each with its appropriate situation. The 'Five' 
element of the response is thus bound over and over again 
to the 'fiveness' element of the situation, the mental set 
being 'How many?,' but is bound only once to any one of the 
concomitants. These concomitants are also such as have 
preferred minor bonds of their own (the sight of a row of 
boys per se tends strongly to call up the 'Boys' element of 
the response). The other elements of the responses (boys, 
girls, pencils, etc.) have each only a slight connection with 
the 'fiveness' element of the situations. These slight connec- 
tions also in large part* counteract each other, leaving the 
field clear for whatever uninhibited bond the 'fiveness' has. 

The third means used to facilitate analysis is having the 
learner respond to situations which, pair by pair, present the 
element in a certain context and present that same context 
with the opposite of the element in question, or with something 
at least very unlike the element. Thus, a child who is being 
taught to respond to 'one fifth' is not only led to respond to 
'one fifth of a cake,' 'one fifth of a pie,' 'one fifth of an apple,' 
'one fifth of ten inches,' 'one fifth of an army of twenty 

* They may, of course, also result in a fusion or an alternation of the 
responses, but only rarely. 



LEARNING BY ANALYSIS AND SELECTION 



161 



soldiers/ and the like ; he is also led to respond to each of these 
in contrast with 'five cakes,' 'five pies,' 'five apples,' 'five times 
ten inches,' 'five armies of twenty soldiers.' Similarly the 'place 
values' of tenths, hundredths, and the rest are taught by 
contrast with the tens, hundreds, and thousands. 

These means utilize the laws of connection-forming to 
disengage a response-element from gross total responses and 
attach it to some situation-element. The forces of use, disuse, 
satisfaction and discomfort are so manoeuvred that an ele- 
ment which never exists by itself in nature can influence 
man almost as if it did so exist, bonds being formed with it 
that act almost or quite irrespective of the gross total situation 
in which it inheres. What happens can be most conveniently 
put in a general statement by using symbols. 

Denote by a b, a g, a 1, a q, a v, and a /? certain situations 
alike in the element a and different in all else. Suppose that, 
by original nature or training, a child responds to these 
situations respectively by r t r 2 , ri r 7 , r t r 12 , ri r 17 , r x r 22 , r t r 27 . 
Suppose that man's neurones are capable of such action that 
r l9 r 2 , r 7 , r 12 , r 17 , r 22 and r 27 , can each be made singly. 

Scheme A 



n 

1-12 



fi 



Vz? 

r 2 7 



ii 



1 62 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



If now the situations, a b, a g, a 1, etc., are responded 
to (each once), the result by the law of exercise will be to 
strengthen bonds as shown in Scheme A, the situation-elements 
noted in the top line of the table being bound to each of the 
response-elements noted at the left side of the table as noted 
by the numbers entered in the body of the table. 

The bond from a to ri, has had six times as much exercise 
as the bond from a to r 2 , or from a to r 7 , etc. In any new 
gross situation, a 0, a will be more predominant in deter- 
mining response than it would otherwise have been; and r x 
will be more likely to be made than r 2 , r 7 , r 12 , etc., the other 
previous associates in the response to a situation containing a. 

Suppose further that g is opposite to, or notably unlike, 
b; that q is opposite to or notably unlike 1; and that (3 is 
notably unlike v. Let 'opposite to' and 'unlike' have the 
meaning that the response elements r 2 and r 7 , r 12 and v 17 , 
r 22 and r 27 are, in the case of each pair, in no respect identical, 
and in large measure incapable of being made by the same 



**not l 



Scheme B 
a b g(opp. of b) 1 q(opp. of 1) v /?(opp. of v) 
6 i i i i i i 



not 22 



LEARNING BY ANALYSIS AND SELECTION 163 

organism at the same time. * Express this fact by replacing 
*V by r not2 r 17 by r notl2 , and r 27 by r not22 . Then, if the situ- 
ations, a b, a g, a 1, a q, etc., are responded to each once, 
the result by the law of exercise will be to strengthen bonds 
as shown in Scheme B on the opposite page, whose plan is the 
same as that of Scheme A. 

The bond from a to r x has again had six times as much 
exercise as the bond from a to r 2 , or from a to r 7 , etc. The 
bonds from a to r 2 and to r not2 tend to counterbalance each 
other in the sense that the tendency is for neither r 2 nor r not3 
to occur,* the field being left free for whatever unimpeded 
tendency the element a possesses. Similarly for the effect 
of the a-r 12 and a-r notl2 bonds. 

Denote by 'opp. of a' an element which is the opposite of, 
or at least very unlike, a. Let 'opposite to' and 'unlike' have 
as before the meaning that the original or acquired responses 
to 'opp. of a' have few or no elements in common with the 
responses to a, and in large measure cannot be made by the 
same organism at the same time as the response to a. Then, 
if the situations, a b, (opp. of a) b, a g, (opp. of a) g, a 1, 
(opp. of a) 1, etc., are responded to each once, the result 
by the law of exercise will be to strengthen bonds as shown 
in Scheme C. 

The element a is thus made to connect six times with r! 
and once with each element of the counteracting pairs, r 2 and 
i'not 2 , r 12 and r notl2 , r 22 and r not22 . The element opp. of a 
is made to connect with r notl six times, and with r 2 , r not2 , 

* They can not occur together. They may occasionally appear in alter- 
nation; or the one of them which by casual physiological happenings has 
an advantage may appear. But the effect of the exercise of the bonds 
leading from the situations, a b, a g, etc., is to make a call up neither r2 
nor rj, neither ri2 nor ri7, since another unimpeded bond and response 
is at hand. 



164 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

Scheme C 

a (opp. of a) b g(opp. of b) 1 q(opp. of 1) v £(opp. of v) 

r 1 6 1 1 1 1 1 1 

61 1 1 1 1 1 



not 



2 



I I 



r not 2 



r 12 1 1 



r not 12 J I 



22 



not 22 



etc. each once, b, g, 1, q, v and p are made to connect with 
the counteracting ri and r not i, each equally often. Thus, by 
.the law of exercise, r t is being connected with a; the bonds 
from a to anything else are being counteracted ; and the slight 
connections from b, g, 1, etc. to ri are being counteracted. 
The element a becomes predominant in situations containing 
it; and its bond toward r ± becomes relatively enormously 
strengthened and freed from competition. 

These three processes occur in a similar, but more compli- 
cated, form if the situations a b, a g, etc. are replaced by 
abcdef, aghijk, etc., and the responses r x r 2 , r x r 7 , 
ri r 12 , etc., are replaced by rx r 2 r 3 r 4 r 5 r«, r x r 7 r 8 r 9 r i0 r n , 
etc. — provided the r lf r 2 , r 3 , r 4 , etc. can be made singly. In so 
far as any one of the responses is necessarily co-active with 
any one of the others (so that, for example, r 13 always brings 
r 26 with it and vice versa), the exact relations of the numbers 
recorded in schemes like Schemes A, B and C on pages 161 
to 164 will change; but, unless n has such an inevitable 
co-actor, the general results of schemes A, B and C will hold 



LEARNING BY ANALYSIS AND SELECTION 165 

good. If i - ! does have such an inseparable co-actor, say r 2 , 
then, of course, a can never acquire bonds with ri alone, 
but everywhere that r x or r 2 appears in the preceding schemes 
the other element must appear also. r x r 2 would then have 
to be used as a unit in analysis. 

The 'a b,' 'a g/ 'a 1,' . . . 'a /?' situations may occur unequal 
numbers of times, altering the exact numerical relations of 
the connections formed and presented in schemes A, B and C, 
but the process in general remains the same. 

So much for the effect of use and disuse in attaching 
appropriate response elements to certain subtle elements of 
situations. There are three main series of effects of satis-v 
faction and discomfort. They serve, first, to emphasize, from 
the start, the desired bonds leading to the responses ri r 2 , v x r 7 , 
etc. to the total situations, and to weed out the undesirable 
ones. They also act to emphasize, in such comparisons and 
contrasts as have been described, every action of the bond 
from V to ri ; and to eliminate every tendency of 'a' to connect 
with aught save r l5 and of aught save 'a' to connect with r r .* 
Their third service is to strengthen the bonds productive of 
appropriate responses to 'a' wherever it occurs, whether or not 
any formal comparisons and contrasts take place. 

The process of learning to respond to the difference of 
pitch of tones from whatever instrument, to the 'square-root- 

* Of course a compound bond, say with a x y z , wherein 'a' 
clearly leads to ri, and x y z, its concomitants, clearly lead to rei tq2 
rc3, may also be confirmed by satisfaction. Suppose, for instance, that 'a' = 
'sevenness/ 'x' = 'pencils/ 'y' = 'on the teacher's desk,' and V = 'the gen- 
eral background of illumination, temperature, presence of other children and 
the like/ and that the response is 'seven pencils on the desk now/ then 
satisfyingness would strengthen the separate bond between V arid ri by 
strengthening the total bond of which it is a loose and largely independent 
part 



l66 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

ness' of whatever number, to triangularity in whatever size 
or combination of lines, to equality of whatever pairs, or to 
honesty in whatever person and instance, is thus a consequence 
of associative learning, requiring no other forces than those 
of use, disuse, satisfaction, and discomfort. "What happens 
in such cases is that the response, by being connected with 
many situations alike in the presence of the element in question 
and different in other respects, is bound firmly to that ele- 
ment and loosely to each of its concomitants. Conversely 
any element is bound firmly to any one response that is 
made to all situations containing it and very, very loosely to 
each of those responses that are made to only a few of the 
situations containing it. The element of triangularity, for 
example, is bound firmly to the response of saying or think- 
ing 'triangle' but only very loosely to the response of saying 
or thinking white, red, blue, large, small, iron, steel, wood, 
paper and the like. A situation thus acquires bonds not only 
with some response to it as a gross total, but also with responses 
to each of its elements that has appeared in any other gross 
totals. Appropriate response to an element regardless of its 
concomitants is a necessary consequence of the laws of exer- 
cise and effect if an animal learns to make that response 
to the gross total situations that contain the element and not 
to make it to those that do not. Such prepotent determination 
of the response by one or another element of the situation 
is no transcendental mystery, but, given the circumstances, 
a general rule of all learning." Such are at bottom only 
extreme cases of the same learning as a cat exhibits that 
depresses a platform in a certain box whether it faces north 
or south, whether the temperature is 50 or 80 degrees, whether 
one or two persons are in sight, whether she is exceedingly 
or moderately hungry, whether fish or milk is outside the 



LEARNING BY ANALYSIS AND SELECTION l6? 

box. All learning is analytic, representing the activity of 
elements within a total situation. In man, by virtue of certain 
instincts and the course of his training, very subtle elements 
of situations can so operate. 

Learning by analysis does not often proceed in the carefully N 
organized way represented by the most ingenious marshalling 
of comparing and contrasting activities. The associations 
with gross totals, whereby in the end an element is elevated 
to independent power to determine response, may come in a 
haphazard order over a long interval of time. Thus a gifted 
three-year-old boy will have the response element of 'saying 
or thinking two I bound to the 'two-ness' element of very 
many situations in connection with the mow-many' mental set. 
and he will have made this analysis without any formal 
systematic training. An imperfect and inadequate analysis 
already made is indeed usually the starting point for what 
ever systematic abstraction the schools direct. Thus, th< 
kindergarten exercises in analyzing out number, color, size, 
and shape commonly assume that 'one-ness' versus 'more-than 
one-ness,' black and white, bier and little, round and not round 
pre, at least vaguely, active as elements responded to in 
some independence of their contexts. Moreover, the tests of 
actual trial and success in further undirected exercises usually 
cooperate to confirm and extend and refine what the syste- 
matic drills have given. Thus the ordinary child in school 
is left, by the drills on decimal notation, with only imperfect 
power of response to the 'place-values.' He continues to learn 
to respond properly to them by finding that 4X40=160, 
4 X 400 = 1600, 800 — 80 = 720, 800 -- 8 — 792, 800 — 800 
= o, 42 X 48 = 21 16, 24 X 48 = 1 152, and the like, are satis- 
fying; while 4X40= 16, 24 X 48 = 832, 800 — 8 = 0, and 
the like, are not. The process of analysis is the same in such 



l68 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

casual, unsystematized formation of connections with elements 
as in the deliberately managed, piecemeal inspection, com- 
parison and contrast described above. 

Occasionally an element seems to pop up in a gross total 
situation and drag its response element out into clear relief, 
with little or no aid from any such extricating associations 
as have been described. So Ruger found in solving mechanical 
puzzles that sometimes a feature of the total situation, hitherto 
dissolved therein, would apparently suddenly crystallize out 
and lead to signal success. The usual fact in such cases is 
that the element already has its preferential minor bond in 
full working strength, but that this bond is kept inactive 
because conditions within the man keep him from the parti- 
cular set of attention or questioning or preliminary action 
by which the element can get enough prepotency to cause 
its response. 

There is also the possibility that the so called 'accidental' 
activities (that is, activities of unknown causation) of man's 
neurones may throw certain elements into relief and bind 
certain responses to them in ways unpredictable from even 
a complete schedule of the man's previously formed bonds. 
Such unearned useful bonds with elements are probably rare, 
and in any case cannot be profitably discussed, the hypothesis 
being that we do not know how they are caused. 

THE HIGHER FORMS OF SELECTION 

In human thought and action a situation often provokes 
responses which have not been bound to it by original ten- 
dencies, use or satisfaction. Such behavior, apparently in 
advance of, or even in opposition to, instinct and habit, appears 
in adaptive responses to novel data, in association by similarity, 



LEARNING EY ANALYSIS AND SELECTION 169 

and in the determination of behavior by its aim rather than 
its antecedents which is commonly held to distinguish pur- 
posive thinking and action from 'mere association and habit/ 

Successful responses to novel data, association by similarity 
and purposive behavior are, however, in only apparent oppo- 
sition to the fundamental laws of associative learning. Really 
they are beautiful examples of it. 

Man's successful responses to novel data — as when he 
argues that the diagonal on a right triangle of 796.278 mm. 
base and 137.294 mm. altitude will be 808.022 mm., or that 
Mary Jones, born this morning, will sometime die — are due 
to habits, notably the habits of response to certain elements 
or features, under the laws of piecemeal activity and assimi- 
lation. 

Nothing, as was hinted in Chapter XI, looks less like the 
mysterious operations of a faculty of reasoning transcending 
the laws of connection-forming, than the behavior of men in 
response to novel situations. Let children who have hitherto 
confronted only such arithmetical tasks, in addition and sub- 
traction with one- and two-place numbers and multiplication 
with one-place numbers, as those exemplified in the first line 
below, be told to do the examples shown in the second line. 



Add Add 


Add 


Subt. 


Subt. 


Multiply 


Multiply 


Multiply 


8 37 


35 


8 


37 


8 


9 


6 


5 24 


68 
23 
19 


5 


24 


5 


7 


3 














Multiply 


Multiply 




Multiply 








32 


43 




34 








23 


22 




26 









They will add them, or subtract the lower from the upper 



170 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

number, or multiply 3X2 imd 2X3, etc., getting 66, S>6, and 
624, or respond to the element of 'Multiply' attached to the 
two-place numbers by 'I can't' or 'I don't know what to do/ 
or the like, for the reasons stated on page 149; or, if one is 
a child of great ability, he may consider the 'Multiply' ele- 
ment and the bigness of the numbers, be reminded by these 
two aspects of the situation of the fact that '9, multiply' gave 
only 81, and that ' H multiply' gave only 100, or the like; 
and so may report an intelligent and justified 'I can't,' or 
reject the plan of 3 X 2 and 2X3, with 66, 86 and 624 for 
answers, as unsatisfactory. What the children will do will, in 
every case, be a product of the elements in the situation that 
are potent with them, the responses which these evoke, and 
the further associates which these responses in turn evoke. 
If the child were one of sufficient genius, he might infer the 
procedure to be followed as a result of his knowledge of the 
principles of decimal notation and the meaning of 'Multiply,* 
responding correctly to the 'place-value' element of each digit 
and adding his 6 tens and 9 tens, 20 twos and 3 thirties ; but" if 
he did thus invent the shorthand addition of a collection of 
twenty-three collections, each of 32 units, he would still do 
it by the operation of bonds, subtle but real. 

It has long been apparent that man's erroneous inferences 
— his unsuccessful responses to novel situations — are due to the 
action of misleading connections and analogies to which he 
is led by the laws of habit. It is also the fact, though this is 
not so apparent, that his successful responses are due to fruit- 
ful connections and analogies to which he is led by the same 
laws. It is not a difference in the laws at work, but in the 
nature of the habits that produce the variations and select, from 
them for the further guidance of thought. The insights of a 
gifted thinker seem marvellous to us because the subtle ele- 



LEARNING BY ANALYSIS AND SELECTION 171 

ments which are prepotent for his thought elude us; but in 
the same way our insights into the operations of new machines, 
new chemical compounds, or new electrical apparatus would 
seem marvellous to a savage to whom levers, screws, reducing 
gears, oxygen, hydrogen, electrical energy and electric potential 
were elements utterly concealed in the gross complexes before 
him. We should succeed with these novel situations as the 
savage could not, because we should accentuate different ele- 
ments, and these elements would have bound to them different 
associates. 

Association by similarity is, as James showed long ago, 
simply the tendency of an element to provoke the responses 
which have been bound to it. Abcde leads to awxys because 
a has been bound to wxyz by original nature, exercise or effect. 

Purposive behavior is the most important case of the in- 
fluence of the attitude or set or adjustment of an organism 
in determining (i) which bonds shall act, and (2) which 
results shall satisfy. 

James early described the former fact, showing that the 
mechanism of habit can give the directedness or purposeful- 
ness in thought's products, provided that mechanism includes 
something paralleling the problem, the aim, or need, in ques- 
tion. 

The second fact, that the set or attitude of the man help 
to determine which bonds shall satisfy, and which shall annoy, 
has commonly been somewhat obscured by vague assertions 
that the selection and retention is of what is 'in point,' or is 
'the right one,' or is 'appropriate,' or the like. It is thus 
asserted, or at least hinted, that 'the will,' 'the voluntary at- 
tention,' 'the consciousness of the problem' and other such en- 
tities are endowed with magic power to decide what is the 
'right' or 'useful' bond and to kill off the others. 



172 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

The facts are that in purposive thinking and action, as 
everywhere else, bonds are selected and retained by the satis- 
fyingness, and are killed off by the discomfort, which they 
produce; and that the potency of the man's set or attitude 
to make this satisfy and that annoy — to put certain conduction- 
units in readiness to act and others in unreadiness — is in every 
way as important as its potency to set certain conduction- 
units in actual operation. Whatever else, it be, purposive 
thought or action is a series of varied reactions or 'multiple 
response.' Point by point in the series, that response is 
selected for survival and predominant determination of future 
response which relieves annoyances or satisfies cravings which 
rule the thinker. In intellectual matters, and in the activities 
of man that are only indirectly connected with the common 
instinctive wants, these annoyances and satisfactions and their 
effect on learning may be, and indeed usually have been, over- 
looked because they lack intensity of effect and uniformity 
of attachment. But they should not be. The power that 
moves the man of science to solve problems correctly is the 
same as moves him to eat, sleep, rest, and play. The efficient 
thinker is not only more fertile in ideas and more often pro- 
ductive of the 'right' ideas than the incompetent is; he also 
is more satisfied by them when he gets them, and more re- 
bellious against the futile and misleading ones. "We trust to 
the laws of cerebral nature to present us spontaneously with 
the appropriate idea," and also to prefer that idea to others. 



chapter xiii 
Mental Functions 

Learning* is connecting", and man is the great learner pri- 
marily because he forms so many connections. The processes 
described in the last two chapters, operating in a man of 
average capacity to learn, and under the conditions of modern 
civilized life, soon change the man into a wonderfully elaborate 
and intricate system of connections. There are millions of 
them. They include connections with subtle abstract elements 
or aspects or constituents of things and events, as well as 
with the concrete things and events themselves. 

Any one thing or element has many different bonds, each 
in accordance with one of many 'sets' or attitudes, which 
co-act with it to determine response. Besides the connections 
leading to actual conduction in neurones, there are those which 
lead to greater or less readiness to conduct, and so determine 
what shall satisfy or annoy in any given case. 

The bonds productive of observable motor responses — such 
as speech, gesture, or locomotion, are soon outnumbered by those 
productive, directly and at the time, of only the inner, con- 
cealed responses in the neurones themselves to which what 
we call sensations, intellectual attention, images, ideas, judg- 
ments, and the like, are due. The bonds productive of motor 
responses also include a far richer equipment than we are accus- 
tomed to list. Man's life is chock-full of evanescent, partly 
made, and slurred movements. These appear in so-called 

1 72 



174 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

'inner' speech, the tensions of eyes and throat in so-called 
intellectual attention, and the like. 

The bonds lead not only from external situations — facts 
outside the man — to responses in him, and from situations 
in him to acts by which he changes outside nature, but also 
from one condition or fact or event in him to another and 
so on in long* series. Of the connections to be studied in 
man's learning an enormous majority begin and end with some 
f.tate of affairs within the man's own brain — are bonds between 
we mental fact and another. 

The laws whereby these connections are made are sig- 
,-OtCVrt for education and all other branches of human engineer- 
ing, learning is connecting; and teaching is the arrangement 
of situations which will lead to desirable bonds and make 
them satisfying. A volume could well be written showing in 
detail just what bonds certain exercises in arithmetic, spelling, 
German, philosophy, and the like, certain customs and laws, 
certain moral and religious teachings, and certain occupations 
and amusements, tend to form in men of given original natures ; 
or how certain desired bonds could economically be formed. 
Such would be one useful portion of an Applied Psychology 
of Learning or Science of Education.* 

The psychology of learning might also properly take as 
its task the explanation of how, starting from any exactly 
defined original nature, the bonds have been formed which 
cause the man in question to make such and such movements, 
attend to this rather than that feature of an object, have such 
and such ideas in response to a given problem, be satisfied 
with some of them and reject others, enjoy this picture, 

* The more elementary and general applications of the laws of learning 
will be found set forth in such books as Bagley's Educative Process; Col- 
vin's Learning Process; and the author's Principles of Teaching. 



MENTAL FUNCTIONS 175 

abstract numerical relations from a certain state of affairs, 
and so on through all the acquisitions which his life of learn- 
ing comprises. Psychology might seek to list the bonds and 
elements of bonds which account for his habits, associations 
of ideas, abstractions, inferences, tastes and the rest, might 
measure the strength of each, discover their relations of facili- 
tation and inhibition, trace their origins, and prophesy their 
future intrinsic careers and their effects in determining what 
new bonds or modifications of old bonds any given situation 
will form. As a geologist uses the laws of physics and 
chemistry to explain the modifications of the earth's surface, 
so a psychologist might use the laws of readiness, exercise, 
and effect to explain the modifications in a man's nature — in 
his knowledge, interests, habits, skill, and powers of thought 
or appreciation. This task is, however, one for the future. 

The process of learning is one of simple making and keep- 
ing connections and readinesses to conduct, but the result is 
a mixture of organized and unorganized tendencies that, even 
in an average three-year-old child, baffles description and 
prophecy. No one has ever even listed the tendencies to 
respond of any one human creature above that age and of 
average capacity to learn, nor even begun to trace the history 
of their acquisition. 

What psychology has done is to consider certain vaguely 
defined groups of tendencies, describing them roughly and 
observing how they change in certain important respects, 
notably in their efficiency in producing some desired result 
in living. The terms, intellect, character, skill, and tempera- 
ment, thus more or less well separate off four great groups of 
connections in a man. Within the sphere of intellect, the 
terms, information, habits, powers, interests and ideals, go 
a step further in delimiting certain groups of connections. 



176 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

The terms, ability to add, ability to read, interest in music, 
courage, and business honesty, are samples of compound ten- 
dencies or groups of connections much narrower than those 
listed above, and cutting* across them in many ways. It is 
such compound tendencies, or groups of connections, or hier- 
archies of bonds that will be the subject matter of this and 
the five following chapters. 

THE ORGANIZATION OF CONNECTIONS 

There are very many points of view from which the total 
multitude of man's original and acquired bonds may be grouped 
into 'traits' or 'abilities' or 'functions' or 'compounds of ten- 
dencies.' The one most often taken regards human behavior 
as a means to attain ends, and so expresses the results of learn- 
ing as 'knowledge of medicine/ 'ability to add/ 'ability to type- 
write,' 'skill in drawing/ and the like. But all sorts of facts 
may be used to cut up the one gross fact of a man's nature, 
or to bundle together the millions of situation-response bonds 
which his nature really is. Thus, by relation to objects of 
importance, we get such traits or functions as a man's know- 
ledge of plants, his politics, or his interests in sports, or his 
love of the water; by relation to certain elementary features 
of the world, we get such traits as color-vision, or discrimin- 
ation of pitch ; by relation to the organization already found in 
man's original nature, we get such groupings as the sexual 
life, feeding habits, protective responses, and the like. We 
may even be swayed by the existence of convenient means 
of measuring behavior, and consequently group man's ten- 
dencies into his ability to mark a's, rate of tapping, memory of 
numbers, accuracy in matching weights, and the like. 

Let us then use the term Mental Function for any group 



MENTAL FUNCTIONS 177 

of connections, or for any feature of any group of connections, 
or indeed for any segment or feature of behavior, which any 
competent student has chosen or may in the future choose 
to study, as a part of the total which we call a man's intellect, 
character, skill, and temperament. By so catholic a definition 
we shall have a convenient term to mean any learnable thing 
in man, the psychology of whose learning anybody has in- 
vestigated. We can thus report the psychology of learning 
in so 'little' a function as tending to say "jeb nok wif les kig 
sun" when, in a given total set, "zek pel tuz" has been said; 
or in so 'large' a function as ability to read the vernacular, or 
even total knowledge — its quantity, quality, and serviceable- 
ness. To utilize what has been thought and done about the 
dynamics of human learning, just such a range of report must 
be made. 

In studying mental functions one might begin at the real 
beginning — man's original nature — and trace each formation 
of each bond, getting eventually the entire history of each 
function in terms of original tendencies and environmental cir- 
cumstances cooperating under the laws of exercise, effect, and 
readiness. Such a thoroughgoing genetic method would be 
admirable in intention, but its execution is impossible in our 
present state of ignorance. 

One might insist on analyzing the function into the actual 
situation-response bonds and readinesses that compose it, so far 
as that could possibly be done, and studying these, its ele- 
ments, before attempting to say anything else about the func- 
tion — for example, about its efficiency as a whole, its improve- 
ment by practice, its temporary decrease in efficiency due to 
illness or excessive exercise, and the like. Such a reduction 
to constituent bonds and readinesses before any further ex- 
perimentation is surely often the part of wisdom. It is very 

12 



178 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

much needed, for example, in the case of the school functions 
— ability to read, ability to spell, ability to add, and the like. 
As a matter of fact, however, almost all of the investigations 
of the psychology of learning concern functions unreduced to 
simple — not to say simplest — constituent connections. Apart 
from the memorizing of unrelated facts — such as series of 
numbers or nonsense syllables — the functions that have been 
studied are for the most part such vague composite ones as 
adding, multiplication, telegraphy, or typewriting. The re- 
sults, though probably not so widely significant as those to be 
expected from studies of learning that is fully analyzed into 
its elements, are of great importance and give the best infor- 
mation available upon which to base plans for improving and 
economizing learning in schools, trades, and professions. 

CHARACTERISTICS OF MENTAL FUNCTIONS 

Mental functions may be 'wide' or 'narrow.' For example, 
'ability to spell' differs from 'ability to spell cat;' 'motor 
control' differs from 'ability to draw a circle' or 'speed in 
tapping;' 'memory' differs from 'ability to memorize a series 
of nonsense syllables' — in each case by being a wider, more in- 
clusive, compound or group of bonds and readinesses. There 
is, theoretically, a variation possible from a function repre- 
senting a single bond between one situation and one response, 
or the readiness of a single conduction unit, to a function 
representing millions of such bonds or readinesses. And the 
functions actually investigated by psychologists cover nearly 
as wide a range. 

A mental function may involve a single set, or a series 
of sets, of bonds — may be 'short' or 'long! It is clear 
that sensitiveness to pain (if in the sense of the leasr 



MENTAL FUNCTIONS 179 

amount of pressure or electrical shock at a certain spot that 
will cause a sensation of pain) differs from ability to draw a 
circle or ability to spell cat, in that the series of neural bonds 
involved is shorter. It is commonly assumed, at least, that 
in the first case the function concerns the working of only 
the first sensory neurones and the further connected neurones 
leading to the cortical 'centers' in question ; in the second and 
third cases, the function concerns such first sensory neurones 
and their connected neurones as far as the cortical centers, 
and thence on to the muscles involved in the drawing, writing, 
or speech. In any case, between such functions as sensitive- 
ness to pain or bitter or red and such as executive ability, 
power to plan a military campaign, or ability to make a 
successful prognosis for a disease, there is this difference in 
the number of bonds in the series, in the number of connec- 
tion-steps between what is taken as the starting situation-group 
and what is taken as the ending response-group. The differ- 
ence in the number of bonds when they are arranged, so to 
speak, 'in parallel' being designated conveniently by 'wide* 
and 'narrow,' this difference in the number of bonds when they 
are arranged 'in series' is conveniently compassed by the terms 
'long' and 'short.' 

A mental function may be more or less prophetic — may 
involve differing proportions of actual and of possible bonds. 
The functions, 'ability to spell cat,' 'knowledge that V28c)= 17,' 
and 'speed in tapping,' refer to the actual existence of bonds. 
The function, 'ability to memorize a series of nonsense 
syllables,' refers to the probability that, when certain things 
happen, certain bonds will be formed. The terms — skill in 
drawing, motor control, business ability, and interest in 
mathematics — ordinarily imply something about both the present 
existence of some bonds and the future formation, under certain 



l8o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

conditions, of others. Similarly, terms designating functions 
may refer to the already existent readiness of certain con- 
duction-units — that is, to the already existent tendency to be 
satisfied by such and such states of affairs ; or they may refer 
to the future existence of that tendency, given certain con- 
ditions; or they may refer to both. 

A mental function may relate primarily to the form of what 
is done, or to the content in connection with which something is 
done. Such functions as 'ability to memorize series of non- 
sense syllables/ 'delicacy of discrimination/ and 'attention 
to small details' may be contrasted with such as 'business 
ability' and 'efficiency in teaching' in that the former are con- 
cerned chiefly with the form, and the latter chiefly with the 
content, of the man's behavior. In the former, the function 
is defined primarily as operating on facts in a certain way — 
memorizing them, or discriminating them, or attending to 
them. In the latter, the function is defined primarily as 
operating successfully on certain facts, without any close specifi- 
cation of what the form of operation is. 

This distinction between the form of a mental function — 
what it does to the data — and its content — the stuff to which 
it does something — is not a very useful one. A statement 
of a function in terms of the content or experiences it works 
on and the form of operation it exercises on them, has to be 
translated into terms of actual situations and responses before 
it can be properly handled in thought or in experimentation. 
The reason for making the distinction here is that, as a 
matter of history, psychology began its study of dynamics 
by assuming 'faculties' of perception, memory, imagination, 
discrimination, attention and the like, which were supposed 
to act somewhat indifferently upon many different sorts of 
content. Consequently, we have, as a heritage, many de- 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT l8l 

scriptions of functions — such as 'keen delicacy of discrimi- 
nation,' or 'slight power of voluntary attention/ or 'excellent 
memory' — which, if they are to mean anything useful, mean 
some fact about all possible bonds of a certain formal aspect — 
the aspect of response to a difference, or the aspect of re- 
sponding to one element predominantly, or the like. These 
descriptions play important roles in arguments concerning the 
improvement of mental functions and the effect of improving 
one upon the efficiency of others. The distinction made above 
will be convenient in dealing with them. 

A mental function may consist primarily in an attitude or 
primarily in an ability. Some mental functions — such as 'en- 
joyment of good reading,' 'desire for approval,' or 'misery at 
being scorned' — refer primarily, or even exclusively, to the 
satisfyingness and annoyingness of certain states of affairs. 
Others — such as 'speed in tapping' or 'ability to give the op- 
posites of certain words,' or 'knowledge of Russian' — refer 
primarily, or even exclusively, to the mere acts or ideas excited 
by certain situations. Others — such as 'interest in mathe- 
matics,' 'appreciation of music/ and 'taste in household 
decoration' — refer obviously to a compound of tendencies to 
do this or that, to think this or that, and also to welcome, 
cherish, or be satisfied by, this and to reject, avoid, or be 
annoyed by, that. 

A mental function refers always to some actually or 
possibly observable events in behavior, not to any mythical 
entities beneath behavior. Wide or narrow in its scope, short 
or long in the series- of operations which it comprises, record- 
ing existing powers or prophesying their existence under 
given conditions, emphasizing the particular situations to 
which the man can respond in a certain way or leaving them 
unspecified, telling what he will do or telling what he will 



l82 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

be satisfied by — in every case a mental function concerns some 
history or prophecy of behavior, and had we knowledge 
enough, would be found to stand for certain bonds and readi- 
nesses in the neurones, or certain probabilities of the appear- 
ance under given conditions of certain bonds and readinesses. 

THE CONCEPTS OF EFFICIENCY AND IMPROVEMENT 

A man may change as a total nature by adding new 
mental functions to his equipment or by changing the con- 
dition of functions already possessed. What we call the same 
function may exist in countless different conditions. Ability 
to add may be of a hundred different degrees; knowledge of 
chemistry may mean a million different things in different men 
at different times, according to just what concrete facts and 
powers the knowledge comprises in each case. 

Education is especially interested in changes in the con- 
dition of a mental function, and more especially in the total 
change in it which makes it better or worse — more or less 
desirable from the inquirer's point of view. We wish to know 
what a certain training has done to 'improve' A's ability to 
add, or knowledge of chemistry, or power to reason, or appre- 
ciation of music. Consequently a change in the condition of 
a mental function in any given man is very often described in 
terms of so much 'gain' or 'improvement' or 'increase in effici- 
ency/ or as so much 'loss' or 'deterioration' or 'decrease in 
efficiency. , 

Each of the two conditions of the function by comparing 
which the change is described is, in such a case, judged as to 
its efficiency — its success, actual or possible, in attaining some 
end — the quantity and quality of some product produced by 
it — its value from some point of view. 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT 183 

Just exactly what we mean when we say that John Smith 
writes better than he did last year, or has gained in self control, 
or has lost skill in billiards from lack of practice, or has 
improved ten per cent in memory for nonsense-syllables — is 
a matter of importance in every case. Scientific treatment of 
John Smith's learning* demands that the two degrees of 
efficiency and the difference between them be so identified that 
all competent thinkers can have in mind the same facts. 

The terms, efficiency, improvement, and deterioration, mean, 
of course, something somewhat similar in all these cases. Other- 
wise competent students of psychology and education would 
not so use them. Their meanings also obviously vary some- 
what with the functions respecting which they are used — 
efficiency in self control, for instance, being in fact different, 
from efficiency in memory for nonsense syllables. Both in 
their similarities and in their diversities, they need critical 
examination. 

The efficiency of a mental function in a given man at \ 
given time is, as a rule, to be defined and measured by the 
quantity and quality of some product produced by the man 
under certain defined conditions. Improvement in it then 
means, and is measured by, the increase in the quantity or 
quality of the product produced under the same external con- 
ditions, or the maintenance of equal quality and quantity under 
more adverse conditions.* In the experiments on learning 
whose results are to be studied here, the external conditions 
have been kept as nearly identical as the experimenter could 
keep them, so that improvement is shown in the quantity or 
quality of the product produced. 

The quantity and quality of the product produced — words 

*Or by some net balance of superiority to the earlier performance in 
quantity, quality and power to combat adverse conditions. 



184 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

remembered, sums done, letters made on the typewriter, puz- 
zles solved, lines translated, and the like — are represented by 
some sort of score or scores. Thus, Book measured the im- 
provement made in learning to typewrite by the gain in the 
number of "strokes" made. "Each letter and mark of pro- 
nunciation, not requiring a shift of the carriage, was counted 
as one stroke; striking the word-spacer was counted as half a 
stroke ; making a capital or any mark requiring the use of the 
'shift key' was counted as two strokes; moving the carriage 
back to make a line was counted as three strokes." The im- 
provement made by school-children in adding has been meas- 
ured by the number of examples (each of ten one-place num- 
bers) added, with a discount of half an example for each 
wrong answer. Improvement in spelling may be measured 
by the difficulty of the words that can be spelled, a person being 
scored 25 if he can just spell words as hard as 'he' ; 30, if he 
can just spell words as hard as "will" ; 35, if he can just spell 
words as hard as "for" ; 50, if he can just spell words as hard 
as "they" and "every" ; 60, if he can just spell words as hard 
*as "also" and "penny" ; and so on. 

Since our thinking about efficiency, improvement and dete- 
rioration is in terms of such scores, it is always desirable to keep 
in mind just what the score really means. Thus, if we use the 
score last mentioned and find that certain children improve in 
spelling in. the first half of the year from 25 to 35, and, in the 
last half, from 35 to 50, and so state that the gain the second 
half-year was 15 or one and one-half times the gain during the 
first half-year, we should ourselves remember and inform others, 
that the 15 really means "from words as hard as 'for' to words 
as hard as 'they' and 'every' " and that the 10 means "from 
words as hard as 'he' to words as hard as 'for.' " A mere gain 
in score by itself alone may be ambiguous or even misleading. 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT 185 

Consider, for example, these cases : From fifty letters 
written per minute to one hundred — from fifty dollars earned 
per month at typewriting to one hundred dollars — from fifty 
words written per minute to one hundred — from fifty per cent 
of correct judgments of the difference in length of two lines, 
100.0 and ioo.i mm. long, to one hundred per cent of correct 
judgments. 

The first gain is one that any literate and fairly intelligent 
adult can make, and can make in a very few hours of practice; 
the second is a gain that only a small percentage of stenogra- 
phers ever make ; the third is a gain that nobody has ever made. 
In all these, the 'fifty' means some positive amount of ability, 
but in the fourth it is a true zero. In the fourth, the change 
is from 'just not any' ability, or the ability that an idiot might 
display (mere chance producing fifty correct judgments), to 
an ability which no eyes and brain can anywhere nearly ap- 
proach. Not only the numerical relations of the amounts, 
not only the slope of the curve, but also the actual facts of 
behavior denoted by the score must be considered in every 
case- 



chapter xiv 
The Amount, Rate, and Limit of Improvement 

practice curves 

The most convenient means of representing the amount of 
improvement made in the course of a given amount of practice 
is by a 'practice-curve/ or line whose height at successive points 
represents the scores made in successive tests. Thus, in Fig. 
32, each sixtieth of an inch along the horizontal, or base-line, 
or abscissa, represents one minute ot practice in typewriting, 
the vertical line at the left is a scale for the score (words writ- 
ten per minute), and the heights of successive portions of the 
practice curve itself show, for each successive practice period, 
the score achieved, rising from 6.3 words per minute to 24.7 
words per minute. Fig. 33 shows the same fact, being identical 
with Fig. 32 in every respect save that the practice curve is 
constructed by joining the mid-points of each of the horizontal 
sections of the curve of Fig. ^2. 

In the following pages the improvement in tossing balls, 
in typewriting, in addition, in writing German script, in short- 
hand, in re-writing words using a key whereby for each letter 
a certain number is written, and in marking the A's on sheets 
of printed capitals is shown in such practice-curves. An exam- 
ination of these will give a general sense of the facts. In 
examining them one should note the amount of time spent in 



AMOUNT, RATE AND LIMIT OF IMPROVEMENT 1 87 

25-1 




50 60 90 12.0 

Amount of exercise; minutes spent in practice. 

Fig. 32. Improvement in Typewriting the Same Paragraph of 100 Words. Written 
Once Daily. Abscissa = Time Spent in Practice: Ordinates — Amounts of Pro- 
duct per Unit oi Time* 



zo - 



15 - 



10 



B 5 - 




30 60 90 120 

Amount of exercise; minutes spent in practice. 
33. Same as Fig. 32, but Using Mid-Points over Each Division of the 
Abscissa-Length corresponding to One Practice Daily. 



i88 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 









100 






M 

o 


- 




o CO 


- 




u 


- 




| 40 

C 


- 




u 20 
u 

> 

< 


/ s/ ^ 1 


,.- 1 . 




1000 2000 

Amount of exercise; number vl tosses. 



3000 



4000 



5000 



Fig. 34. Improvement in Tossing Balls: Subject F. The Average Number of Tosses 
without Failure in Each Successive Practice Period. (The horizontal scale is for 
the amount of exercise of the function, as measured by the number of tosses.) 




I z 3456765 

Amount of exercise: in thousands of tosses. 
Fig. 35. Improvement in Tossing Balls. Subject A. Same Arrangement as in Fig. 34. 



AMOUNT, RATE AND LIMIT OF IMPROVEMENT 



I89 




10 20 30 40 50 feO 70 
Amount of exercise: in hours. 



90 100 110 120 130 



Fig. 36. Improvement in Typewriting by the Touch Method: Subject Y^ 
Book, '08, Plate opposite p. 21, 



fcftw 




10 20 30 

Amount of exercise: in hours. 

Fig. 27> Improvement in Typewriting by the Sight Method: Subject Z. After Book, 
'08, Plate oppo*ite p. 21. 



igo 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



300 



J zoo 



100 



10 20 

Amount of practice: in minutes. 



30 



40 



50 



60 



Fig. 



38. Average Curve of Improvement of Nineteen Adult Students in Column 
Addition of One-Place Numbers. 



2000 



a 1500 



£ 1000 



« 500 




200 

Amount of exercise: in minutes. 



400 



600 



Fig. 39. Improvement in Writing English Words in German Script. Four Groups of 
Women Students. After Leuba and Hyde, '05, p. 362. (The curves marked 1-1, 
1-2, 1-3 and 2-1 give the improvement for the groups practicing 20 minutes once a 
day, 20 minutes once in two days, 20 minutes once in three days, and 20 minutes 
twice a day respectively.) 



AMOUNT, RATE AND LIMIT OF IMPROVEMENT I9I 

30 

10 

a 
§15 

a 

°a 
2i0 

M 

« 

u 




3 , 



M o 10 za 30 40 so 60 

Days of practice: 90 minutes study daily. 

Fig. 40. Improvement in Copying a Text in Short-hand. After Swift, '03, p. 226. 
A line equals line of James Talks to Teachers, or about eight and a third words. 




S 50 100 120 

Fig. 41. Improvement in Writing Numbers for Letters in English Text: Four Groups 
of College Students. After Starch, '12, p. 212. (The curves marked 10-2-1, 
20 1-1, 40-1-2, and 120 are for the groups practicing 10 minutes twice a day, 20 
minutes once a day, 40 minutes every other day, and 120 minutes all in one period, 
respectively.) The abscissa does not start at zero, but at 5 minutes. 



192 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



40 



.1 30 

3 

8 

Ck 



3 

| 20 



6 10 



100 



125 



150 



?.5 50 75 

Minutes spent in practice (approximate). 
Fig. 42. Average Curve of Improvement of Nine Women Students in Marking a's 
in Regular Text, No Page Being Used Twice. Computed from Data Given by 
Whitley, '11, p. 120 ff. (The scores given by Whitley are somewhat complicated, 
and the curve drawn here is therefore only an approximation.) 

connection with the amount of improvement made. Unless 
otherwise noted, this time was spent, a few minutes a day over 
many days. I report here also one sample of the results 
obtained from practice in the case of school-children under 
school conditions. 

Kirby ['13] tested over 700 children in grade 4 before and 
after sixty minutes spent in practice at column addition* of 

* The arrangement in the case of addition was 75 minutes practice 

in all, the work of the first and last fifteen minutes being compared. 

This comparison gives, then, the approximate effect of sixty minutes 
of practice. 



AMOUNT, RATE AND LIMIT OF IMPROVEMENT I93 

ten one-place numbers. They changed from an average score 
of approximately 31 columns, 24 columns being added cor- 
rectly, to a score of approximately 50 columns, 37 being added 
correctly. That is, they gained over fifty per cent in speed, 
maintaining almost exactly the same accuracy. This work 
was done under school conditions as an educational experi- 
ment, and it was possible for any child to spend time outside 
in practice with addition. It is unlikely that many children 
did this, however. Kirby's results have been confirmed by 
Hahn ['13]. 

Kirby also tested over 600 children in grade 3 before and 
after fifty minutes practice with division, * using printed 
blanks of mixed example such as: 

50= 6s and remainder 29 = 3s and remainder 

43 = 7s and remainder 35 = 4s and remainder 

The children changed from an average score of about 40 
examples, with 2>7 correct, to a score of about y^> examples 
with 70 correct. They nearly doubled the amount done with- 
out any decrease in accuracy. Like the addition experiment, 
this is subject to possible, but probably very slight, influences 
from work done outside the practice periods themselves. 

THE FREQUENCY AND RAPIDITY OF IMPROVEMENT UNDER 
EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS 

So far as I am aware of the facts, no mental function 
has ever been deliberately practiced with an eye to improv- 

* The arrangement in the case of division was 60 minutes practice 
in all, the work of the first and last ten minutes being compared. This 
comparison gives, then, the approximate effect of fifty minutes of practice. 

13 



194 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

Ing it, and with proper opportunity for the law of effect to 
operate, without some improvement as a result. There have 
been cases where one investigator has failed to find improve- 
ment, but where others have found it. There have been cases, 
of course, where certain individuals failed to improve. And 
there may be cases of zero improvement unreported because 
the investigator, finding no result from practice, said nothing 
about it. On the whole, however, it seems fairly safe to say 
that all functions that anyone is likely to ever take any 
theoretical or practical interest in are improvable unless the 
general practice of life has already put them at their limit; 
and that the latter case is very rare. 

The rate of improvement shown in experiments with 
practice seems, and to some extent is, in sharp contrast to the 
rate shown by children in schools, workers at trades, and all 
of us in the learning of ordinary work and recreation. For 
example, let the reader get intelligent men and women to 
estimate the degrees of efficiency that they would expect, on 
grounds of general experience as workers or teachers or both, 
to be attained in the cases described in the following tabular 
arrangement (Table i). Have the last line of each division 
of the table kept hidden from them. Then compare their 
estimates with the efficiencies actually attained in experiments 
on practice, shown in the last line of each division of the table. 
Or let the reader consider that if he should now spend seven 
hours, well distributed, in mental multiplication with three- 
place numbers, he would thereby much more than double his 
speed and also reduce the number of his errors; or that, by 
forty hours of practice, he could come to typewrite (suppos- 
ing him to now have had zero practice) approximately as 
fast as he can now write by hand; or that, starting from 
zero knowledge, he could learn to copy English into German 



AMOUNT, RATE AND LIMIT OF IMPROVEMENT IQ5 

script at a rate of fifty letters per minute, in three hours or 
a little more. 

Table i. 

The Facts of Three Typical Experiments Arranged to Allow 

Estimates of the Amount of Improvement, and Comparison 

of These with the Actual Improvement 

I. 

Function. — Addition, of one-place numbers, each being orally announced. 

Individuals. — Ten hospital nurses, 21-35 years old. 

Initial Ability. — Number of one-place numbers added in five minutes; 180, 

200, 225, 225, 290, 150, 220, 235, 250, 260. 
Length of Practice. — 2 hours, 25 minutes. 
Distribution of Practice. — 5 minutes daily except Sunday. 
Ability after Practice.- — Number of one-place numbers added in five 

minutes. 

t > > ~" 1 > ' > ~" — ' > " » > • 

380, 430, 368, 460, 540, 280, 380, 570, 440, 540* 

II. 

Function. — Addition of columns, each of ten one-place numbers, the 

sum of each column being written. 
Individuals. — College and university students : the seven most ordinary 

out of nineteen individuals. 
Initial Ability. — Number of one-place numbers so added in five minutes 

(counting the writing of a two-place answer as equal to one addition). 
225, 232, 240, 244, 257, 257, 261. 
Length of Practice. — Approximately 55 minutes. 
Distribution of Practice. — Daily, for so long as was required to add 

48 columns : from 10 down to 6 minutes as practice progressed. 
Ability after Practice. — Number of one-place numbers added in five 

minutes. 



304, 417, 317, 400, 306, 374, 378, t 

III. 

Function. — Marking a's on two pages of English print. 
Individuals. — Nine college students. 



* These correspond respectively, to the ten initial abilities listed above. 
t These correspond, respectively, to the seven initial abilities listed above. 



196 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

Average Initial Ability on second day after one preliminary test of 

two pages. — In terms of time required, 527 seconds. 
Average Length of Practice. — 2% hours. 
Distribution of Practice. — Daily for 17 days. 
Ability after Practice, — 348 seconds. 



DIFFERENCES AMONGST INDIVIDUALS IN THE RATE OF IM- 
PROVEMENT IN THE SAME FUNCTION 

Individuals differ very greatly in the rate of improvement 
in the case of every function where adequate measures are at 
hand. Kirby found that the gain in amount of addition done 
(in 15 minutes) which resulted from sixty minutes' practice, 
varied from below zero to over sixty 10-digit examples. The 
distribution of these gains is shown in Table 2. The variation 
was as great in the case of the individual gains in division. 
Of course some of the extreme gains are due in part to a 
record in the first trial that is, by sickness, misunderstanding 
or some other irrelevant factor, unfairly low; or to a final 
record that is, by an exceptionally favorable concatenation of 
circumstances, unfairly high; or (but much more rarely) by 
a conjunction of these two chances in the same individual. 
If we allow generously for this, by supposing that in reality 
no child would improve less than 10 per cent and that the 
amendment of high records down is the same as this of low 
records up, we still have a very wide variation, approximately 
that shown in Table 3. 

The causes of these individual differences in improve- 
ment may be considered under three heads : ( 1 ) differences 
in methods of work which can be taught to one person as 
well as to another, or somewhat nearly as well; (2) differences 
in previous training which, at any given time, must be accepted, 



AMOUNT, RATE AND LIMIT OF IMPROVEMENT 



I 9 7 



Table 2. 
individual differences in rate of improvement in addition (after 
Kirby ['13]). The Frequencies of Various Amounts of Difference between 
the Number of Examples Done Correctly in 15 Minutes before 45 Minutes 
of Practice and the Number Done Correctly in 15 Minutes after 45 
Minutes of Practice: in the Case of 563 Pupils of Grades 4 and 5, the 
45 Minutes Being Divided into 2, 3 or 7 Periods. 



gain 



15 to 


12 10-d 


igit examples 


occurred in 


4 


individuals 


II " 


8 


t 


tt tt 


9 


a 


7 " 


4 


t « 


tt <t 


24 


Si 


3 " 


' 


( tt 


tt a 


49 


it 


1 " 


4 


t a 


a a 


65 


Si 


5 " 


8 


t tt 


tt a 


72 


" 


9 " 


12 ' 


t tt 


tt a 


80 


a 


13 " 


16 


t tt 


tt a 


61 


tt 


17 " 


20 


ft 


tt a 


64 


*» 


21 " 


24 


I ti 


tt it 


17 


a 


25 " 


28 


t tt 


tt a 


20 


tt 


29 " 


32 


t a 


tt a 


18 


ts 


33 " 


36 ' 


t u 


tt tt 


11 


tt 


37 " 


40 


c tt 


tt tt 


9 


ti 


41 " 


44 


4 u 


tt tt 


2 


is 


45 " 


48 ' 


t a 


tt a 


4 


tt 


49 " 


52 


t a 


a a 


2 


ti 


53 " 


56 ' 


t a 


tt tt 





tt 


57 " 


60 


t u 


it tt 


1 


tt 


61 " 


64 ' 


< a 


tt tt 


2 


if 



but which could have been prevented; and (3) differences in 
original nature which must be accepted and allowed for. It 
is of the utmost importance to the educational theory of any 
function that the individual differences in rate of improvement 
in it should be referred to their specific causes along these three 
lines. Unfortunately, systematic measurements of individual 
differences in rate of improvement are few in number, and 
an experimental analysis of causes has hardly been begun. 
At present we know only that differences in original nature 
are responsible for much of the variation found. 



iq8 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



Table 3. 

individual differences in rate of improvement in addition. 
The Facts of Table 2, after Large Allowances Are Made for Ac- 
cidental Divergences of the Obtained Measures from the True Im- 
provability of the Individuals Concerned : Approximate. 



A 


gain 


of 


I 


to 


4 


" 


a 


" 


5 


a 


9 


a 


tt 


tt 


10 


a 


14 


a 


it 


tc 


15 


tt 


19 


tt 


« 


a 


20 


ti 


24 


a 


a 


" 


25 


a 


29 


a 


it 


tt 


30 


it 


34 


t: 


" 


tt 


35 


tt 


39 


It 


it 


tt 


40 


" 


44 


tt 


tt 


ti 


45 


it 


49 



irred 


in 13 in 
" 73 


divid 


tt 
tt 
tt 
tt 


"137 
"141 
" 81 

" 38 




tt 


" 20 




tt 


* 6 




" 


" 2 




tt 


" 3 





THE LIMIT OF IMPROVEMENT 



The limit of efficiency of a mental function is, of course, 
rarely reached in experimental studies, save in the case of 
extremely 'narrow' functions, such as knowing the meaning" 
of one or a few words, being able to repeat a poem, or type- 
writing a single sentence. The best illustrations of mental 
functions at their limit of efficiency are to be found among 
those occupations of work or play excellence in which is 
sought with great zeal and intelligence. The championship 
'records' in typewriting, shorthand, telegraphic sending, golf, 
billiards, and the like, show approximations to the limits of 
improvement in the functions concerned in the case of in- 
dividuals gifted by nature probably with specially high limits 
in the cases in question. 

The feats of such experts — who can typewrite 70 words 
containing approximately 350 letters per minute, take down 
the most rapid speech without an error, send 49 words or 
486 separate impacts on the telegraph key in a minute, keep 



AMOUNT, RATE AND LIMIT OF IMPROVEMENT 199 

four balls tossing in the air with one hand, multiply any number 
less than iooo by any similar number in a few seconds, drive 
a golf ball over two hundred yards within an angle of ten 
degrees, and the like, — are doubtless beyond what the majority 
of men could ever achieve. Such expertness is the product 
of a rare native ability as well as of long, intelligent and 
earnest practice. On the other hand, the efficiency possible 
in any one such function in the case of an ordinary person, who 
gives enough time and interest to well-advised practice in it, 
is, I am convinced, often underestimated. The main reason 
why we write slowly and illegibly, add slowly and with fre- 
quent errors, delay our answers to simple questions and our 
easy decisions between courses of action, make few and uneven 
stitches, forget people's names and our own engagements, lose 
our tempers, and the like, is not that we are doing the best that 
we are capable of in that particular. It is that we have too 
many other improvements to make, or do not know how to 
direct our practice, or do not really care enough about improv- 
ing, or some mixture of these three conditions. 

It is my impression that the majority of men remain far 
below their limit of efficiency even when it is decidedly in 
their interest to approach it, and when they think they are 
doing the best that they are capable of. I venture to prophesy 
that the thousand bookkeepers in, say, the grocery stores of 
New York who have each had a thousand hours of practice 
at addition, are still, on the average, adding less than two- 
thirds as rapidly as they could, and making twice as many 
errors as they would at their limit. It appears likely that 
the majority of teachers make no gain in efficiency after their 
third year of service, but I am confident that the majority 
of such teachers could teach very much better than they do. 
Even in a game where excellence is zealously sought, the 



200 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

assertion that "I stay at just the same level, no matter how 
much I practice" probably does not often mean that the in- 
dividual in question has really reached the physiological limit 
set for him in that function. 

I cannot prove the assertions made in the last two para- 
graphs, since the experiment of subjecting such individuals to 
practice under proper conditions of methods and interest has 
not been made. Nor can I give the evidence that has led to the 
assertions, since it includes too many fragmentary facts from 
too wide a variety of sources. Only a few samples of the 
facts that seem to me to show that men in general thus fall 
short of their possible efficiencies can be quoted. 

First, hardly any functions have ever been practiced in the 
course of the scientific study of mental functions, which did 
not improve and, provided they were of fairly narrow scope 
and with success and failure easily distinguishable, at a fairly 
rapid rate. 

Second, there are striking cases of individuals who have 
had enormously long practice, as taken in the course of schools 
or trades, and who have kept at the same level of efficiency 
for a long time, but who, under more favorable conditions, 
make notable advances. For example, Aschaffenburg ['96 b.] 
had four experienced type-setters set type for an hour and a 
quarter, on each of four successive days, in their own shop, 
with their own type, etc. Either they held back in the early 
days for no intelligible reason, or they improved notably under 
the stimulus of an observer and the zeal to make a good 
showing. 

The first and third were 'normal' days ; on the second and 
fourth alcohol was administered, but not till after the first 
quarter-hour. The achievement, in terms of letters and spaces 
'set' in the first quarter hour of each day, was as follows : 



AMOUNT, RATE AND LIMIT OF IMPROVEMENT 201 



DAY 




INDIVIDUAL 








F.S. 


K. O.C. 


C. H. 


J. L. 


AVERAGE 


I 


577 


524 


599 


600 


575 


2 


649 


506 


601 


614 


593 


3 


601 


598 


669 


664 


633 


4 


725 


594 


656 


723 


675 



Third, a new stimulus to interest and effort, or a new 
method of training, often produces a similar advance in the 
ordinary work of the world. For example, the record in the 
pole-vault has risen in a score or so of years by many inches. 
This can only be explained by supposing that the pole-vaulters 
of twenty years ago could have vaulted much higher than 
they did, had they used better methods, or more zeal, or 
both. Probably the jugglers of the past thought that keeping 
three balls tossing and balancing a chair on one's nose were 
the limits to skill until some one did keep four balls tossing 
or balance a chair on an umbrella on his nose. They then found 
that they too could do likewise. 

It seems to me therefore that mental training in schools, 
in industry and in morals is characterized, over and over and 
over again, by spurious limits — by levels or plateaus of effi- 
ciency which could be surpassed. The person who remains on 
such a level may have more important things to do than to 
rise above it; the rise, in and of itself, may not be worth the 
time required; the person's nature may be such that he truly 
cannot improve further, because he cannot care enough about 
the improvement or cannot understand the methods necessary. 
But sheer absolute restraint — because the mechanism for the 
function itself is working as well as it possibly can work — 
is rare. 



chapter xv 

The Factors and Conditions of Improvement 

the elements in improvement 

We may start with the gross changes in efficiency as 
scored, and analyze them back into the elements which con- 
stitute them, or we may start with the elementary changes 
found in the simplest facts of learning and show how certain 
of these facts, when happening together in a certain way, pro- 
duce the gross changes in efficiency as scored. Both procedures 
lead, I believe, to the same conclusion — that improvement is 
the addition or subtraction of bonds or the addition or sub- 
traction of satisfyingnes.s and annoyingness. When any func- 
tion is improved, either some response is being put with, or 
disjoined from, some situation; or some state of affairs is 
being made more satisfying or more annoying. The rise of 
the practice curve parallels the growth of a system of habits, 
attitudes and interests. 

The addition of bonds may be apparent in external be- 
havior, as when the adder comes to connect * 7 a directly with 
the thought of 79; apparent via the learner's report, as when 

the adder comes to connect 8 directly with the thought of 

20; or hidden in the nervous system, and observable only in 
the form of secondary consequences, as when the adder comes 
to get the response 'thought of 79' to the situation J? , nine 
hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand instead of 

202 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 203 

nine hundred and ninety.* So also for the subtraction of 
bonds; as in the cases, respectively, of one ceasing to write 
down the amount he has to 'carry' ; of one ceasing to say to 
himself ' — and — are — ;' and of one getting the response 
'thought of 79' to the situation 4 3 7 2 in one second instead of 
eight seconds.! 

Strengthening and weakening could have been used in the 
foregoing in place of 'addition of and 'subtraction of.' Add- 
ing a bond is simply strengthening it from zero strength up; 
strengthening a bond is simply adding to it piecemeal. Sub- 
tracting a bond is weakening it to zero, and weakening it is 
subtracting from it piecemeal. 

When one bond is weakened and another, to take its 
place, is simultaneously added, we have the common case of 
improvement by substituting a superior response. 

The addition and subtraction of satisfyingness and an- 
noyingness may also be apparent in external behavior, apparent 
via the learner's report, or observable only by one who had a 
view of the inner workings of the nervous system. When the 
sincere learner ceases his complaints at the task, choosing to 
memorize nonsense syllables rather than read the story he would 
before have infallibly preferred, all competent observers judge 
that the balance between the satisfyingness and the annoyingness 
of the state of affairs in question has changed. Or he may, 
without external signs other than speech, report to them an 
increase in zeal as each syllable is fixed. Or a certain con- 
duction-unit in his brain may increase its readiness to conduct, 
but to so small an extent, or in connection with such other hap- 

* The inner process here might be in whole or in part, one of subtract- 
ing bonds. 

t The inner process here might be, in whole or in part, one o,f add- 
ing bonds. 



204 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

penings, that he has no witness to the fact in the form of 
an observable increase in felt satisfaction at the felt state 
of affairs corresponding to that conduction-unit's conduction. 
The physiology and psychology of welcoming and reject- 
ing, liking and disliking, being content and being annoyed, 
have received little attention, and their role in improvement has 
been described only vaguely as the total fact that the person 
'lost his aversion to the work' or 'gained zest for success' or 
the like. Everyone can, however, see their importance in the 
improvement of abilities like the production of music or writ- 
ing English, a large part of which consists in being able to be 
satisfied by the good elements of what one produces, and so 
to reject the bad. Such cherishing and rejecting is potent 
also in adding, typewriting, playing billiards, and the like. 
Everywhere practice may not only bind the right response 
to a certain situation, but also teach us to be satisfied by 
their connection. In playing golf the satisfyingness of the 
sight of one's ball speeding down the course spreads to make 
the way one held and moved the club a little more satisfying 
as a response to the situation which provoked the stroke; 
and this makes for improvement as truly as does an actual 
strengthening of the bond between the situation provoking 
the stroke and the stroke. For, in playing golf, we do not 
necessarily meet each situation by the position or movement 
which has the closest bond with the situation, but select from 
several the one which feels right to us as we execute it. We 
may direct each stage in the club's swing**o make it, in the 
expressive slang, 'feel good to' us. The same rejection of 
one satisfying response after another occurs in all mental pro- 
duction. Even in what seems to be a fluent sequence of sheer 
connecting without selection, all the responses being equally 
satisfying (as in expert adding), there will be found this same 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 20$ 

varied reaction and selection. Slight tendencies to think of 
other matters or to relax the wide-awakeness to 'combinations' 
do appear. Nipping these in the bud and being satisfied by 
unremitting devotion to the proper task is an element in 
speed, and the greater satisfaction thereat is consequently an 
element in improving speed. 

EXTERNAL CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 

The conditions of improvement may best be reviewed under 
four heads — External conditions, such as length of practice 
period, time of day, amount of food, and the like ; Physiological 
conditions, such as dosing with alcohol or caffein or attack 
by certain diseases; Psychological conditions, such as interest 
and worry; and Educational conditions, such as the organi- 
zation of the practice drills and the methods of work taught to 
the learner. 

Of the external conditions, I shall discuss, as a sample 
problem, the Distribution of Practice — the length of the prac- 
tice periods and of the intervals between. 

The same total amount of exercise of a function, say ten 
hours, may of course be distributed in an infinite number 
of ways. The practice-periods may be ten of 60 minutes, 
or twenty of 30 minutes, or forty of 15 minutes, or five of 
60 minutes followed by ten of 30 minutes, or a series running 
100 min., 80 min., 60 min., 50 min., 40 min., 35 min., 30 min., 
25 min., 25 min., 25 min., followed by thirteen, each of ia 
min., etc. Each ~uch division of the practice time may be 
made with any one of countless arrangements of the intervals 
between. For any given function, in a given individual, at 
a given stage of his general training and special advancement 
in the function, and under given cooperating and hindering 
conditions external to the function itself — the best distribution 



206 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

could be found. 'Best' would, it is understood, be defined 
as best for the immediate improvement of the function, or as 
best for its permanent efficiency, or as best for the total wel- 
fare of the learner in question, or in some intelligible way. 

It might be that some simple laws would hold good for 
all functions at all stages of advancement in all individuals 
regardless of cooperating circumstances. Thus, it might be 
that period-lengths of from ten to twenty minutes were uni- 
versally better, from any point of view, than longer or shorter 
period lengths; and that intervals of 24 to 48 hours were 
universally better, whatever the period-length, function, person 
and the like, than longer or shorter intervals. Or it might 
be that the optimum interval was universally one of twenty 
times the period length. Or it might be that the nearer a 
function was to its limit, the shorter the optimum period 
length became and the longer the optimum interval became. 

The experimental results obtained justify in a rough way 
the avoidance of very long practice-periods and of very short 
intervals.* They seem to show, on the other hand, that much 
longer practice-periods than are customary in the common 
schools are probably entirely allowable, and that much shorter 
intervals are allowable than those customary between the first 
learning and successive 'reviews' in schools. f 

*What period-length shall be considered 'very long' depends on 
the amount of variety and satisfyingness the function shows. Two 
hours is thus a very long period for addition or learning 32-syllable 
nonsense series, but perhaps not for playing golf or chess. 

What interval between periods shall be considered 'very short' depends 
on the length of the periods themselves, and also on the character of the 
function. For adding practiced in twenty-minute periods, an interval of 
five minutes would be very short, and probably also one of five hours. 
The knowledge which would enable one to define the statement made 
in the text is lacking. 

t 'Practice-Period' here does not refer to the entire recitation-length, 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 



20: 



In the case of addition and division the matter of length 
of practice-period has been studied by Kirby ['13] for periods 
up to 20 minutes with some thirteen hundred children of 
the third and fourth grades. 

The arrangement of Kirby's experiments in addition was 
as follows : 









Group 


22 1/2 


Group is 


Group 6 


Gr 


Up 2 


School 


Day 


I 


15 


min. 


15 


min. 


15 


min. 


15 


min. 


n 


it 


2 


22*/ 2 


tt 


15 


u 


6 


tt 


2 


tt 


tt 


tt 


3 


22y 2 


u 


15 


tt 


6 


" 


2 


ft 


tt 


tt 


4 


15 


u 


IS 


" 


6 


" 


2 


" 


tt 


tt 


5 






15 


a 


6 


" 


2 


u 


tt 


tt 


6 


• • • • 








6 


" 


2 


" 


tt 


ft 


7 






. # 




6 


a 


2 


" 


tt 


ft 


8 


■ • ■ 




# # 




6 


ft 


2 


" 


tt 


tt 


9 


• • . . 




. , 




3 


tt 


2 


« 


tt 


ft 


10 






. . 




15 


" 






tt 


tt 


11 


.... 




•• 








and 
for 22 


so on 

days* 



24 



15 min. 



The arrangement of Kirby's experiments in division was 
as follows : 









Group 20 


Group 10 


Group a 


100 


1 Day 


1 


10 min. 


IO 


min. 


10 min. 


" 


tt 


2 


20 " 


10 


« 


2 


«< 


" 


a 


3 


20 ■ 


10 


" 


2 


« 


tt 


a 


4 


10 " 


10 


<« 


2 


« 


tt 


it 


5 




IO 


« 


2 


" 


" 


tt 


6 




IO 


tt 


2 


« 


" 


" 


7 








2 


ft 


it 


" 


8 








2 


" 


tt 


tt 


9 




• • 




and 
for 


so on 
20 days 


I', 


tt 


22 


t , 






10 


min. 



but to that fraction of it devoted to drill in one function like the multipli- 
cation-table of nines, or the spelling of the names of the States, or speed 
in hand-writing, or rehearsing a ten-word vocabulary, or oral practice on 
the use of the article in German. The customary length for such units of 
learning is probably about five minutes. 

* The last of these practice days had a period of three minutes. 



208 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

These experiments were made from the practical point of 
view, from which it is immaterial how much the children study 
the matter that is being practiced outside of the school hours. 
If we assume that they did so as much when the practice 
periods were distributed in many short periods as when they 
were distributed in few long periods, the results show that 
the shorter practice-periods, especially the two-minute periods, 
are much more advantageous. It must, however, be re- 
membered that this assumption is almost surely somewhat 
in error, except for the one case of no practice at all 
out of school. If the children practiced themselves at all 
out of school, they would probably do so to a greater extent 
in four weeks than in one.* The gross superiority of the 
shorter over the longer periods may therefore be discounted 
somewhat, and be held subject to further investigation. 
The results of these experiments were as follows : 
In addition, the gains from practice in 22 y 2 -, 15-, 6-, and 
2-minute periods, respectively, were in the relation 100, 121, 
1 01 and 146^. In division, the gains from practice in 20-, 
10-, and 2-minute periods, respectively, were in the relation 
100, 1 ioy 2 and 177. 

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 

It should be an obvious consequence of the nature of 
improvement that the fundamental psychological conditions 
for it are that some chance be given for desirable bonds to be 
added or for undesirable bonds to be destroyed. Amplifi- 
cation or elimination must occur if there is to be any change. 

The mere exercise of any modifiable function almost 

* The improvement due to regular school work would also be greater 
for the groups who practiced for short periods and so over more days. 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 209 

always results in some variations, but whatever stimulates 
variation gives the chance of a wider range of useful varia- 
tions for the learner to adopt or reject. Ruger notes that in 
solving mechanical puzzles, good learners would occasionally 
manipulate the puzzle at random with the hope that some 
chance position of it would suggest variations in attack, or 
would deliberately seek to change their assumptions about 
the puzzle with the same end in view. 

Whatever stimulates relevant, promising bonds will be 
still more favorable. Thus, to quote Ruger again, the efficient 
learner is characterized by special care in examining his 
assumptions so as to let only those which are themselves 
sound be potent in producing new bonds. 

The selection of desirable bonds, once they have appeared 
at all, and the elimination of undesirable ones, are not at all 
necessary consequences of the mere exercise of a function. 
Many men in many functions let occasional advantageous 
practices lapse and perpetuate blunders with perverse zeal. 
When a function is so exercised that the consequences to the 
individual are alike when he fails and when he succeeds, when 
he strengthens a good bond and when he strengthens a bad 
one, when he works above his average rate and when he 
works below it — there can be only chance divergences from 
a confirmation of his initial status. So a poetical hermit, 
utterly devoid of literary taste, might write no better lyrics 
year after year. So, in fact, men who care nothing about the 
beauty of their speech and are not subjected to social pressure, 
say millions of words without improving in accent, timbre, 
syntax or style. So, in experiments in judging which of two 
weights, of 100 and ioi grams, is heavier, the record being 
kept secret and no other source of influence on the function than 
its own exercise being allowed, the subject cannot improve. 
14 



2IQ THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

Whatever does favor the repetition and satis fyingness of 
the desirable bonds, and the disuse and annoyingness of the 
undesirable bonds, will, other things being equal, favor im- 
provement. The most noteworthy psychological conditions 
of improvement come under this head — are means of direct- 
ing the forces of use and satisfaction in favor of desirable 
and against undesirable bonds. Three of these — ease of 
identification of the bonds to be formed or broken, ease of 
identification of the states of affairs which should satisfy or 
annoy, and ease of application of satisfaction or annoyance 
to them — are direct consequences of the laws of learning and 
may be described first. The next five, which we .iiay call 
the 'interest series' — interest in the work, interest in improve- 
ment, an active, inquiring attitude, attention, and acceptance 
of the work as significant to the worker's wants — are potent 
partly because they help to produce variations, still more be- 
cause they produce relevant and desirable variations, but most 
of all, perhaps, because they reinforce the good, and eliminate 
the bad ones. 

What is meant by 'ease of identification of the bonds to be 
formed or broken,' 'ease of identification of the states of affairs 
which should satisfy (or annoy),' and 'ease of application of 
satisfaction (or annoyance) to them,' can be understood best 
by illustrations. To improve in addition, subtraction, multi- 
plication and division, is on the average, easier for the same 
person than to improve in solving 'problems.' One reason 
is that in the former the bonds to be made or strengthened are 
(except in the case of the selection of the trial quotient 
figures in long division) rigidly defined and subjected to ex- 
clusive practice as needed. Another reason is that the results 
that should satisfy (accurate answers and greater speed) can 
also be easily identified and accompanied by some satisfier in 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 211 

the form of approval, shortened time of work, or even some 
extrinsic reward. In the solution of problems, the learner 
cannot so easily tell what particular bonds he has to form, 
drill himself in these alone, know in detail what connections 
should content him and how to make himself feel contented 
at them. 

To improve in the formal matters of spelling, punctuation, 
syntax, approved usage, and the like, is easier than to improve 
in force, clearness and general literary attractiveness, partly 
because in the former the connections to be made and avoided 
can be known and exclusively exercised, and the activities 
that are theoretically desirable can be designated, recognized 
when they occur and made satisfying at the time to the 
actor. In the latter, it is hard to see just what connection 
in thought does the -good or the harm in question, so as to 
make it and be glad at it, or be annoyed with it and avoid 
it. So great is the difference in improvability here that the 
greater part of the teaching of English writing in high- 
schools does not even pretend to improve the subtler general 
qualities of imagination, humor, force, and beauty. In the 
rare cases where definite situation-response connection making 
for 'style* can be identified, controlled and rewarded or 
punished, we do get rapid improvement in so far forth. For 
example, one of the greatest aids in teaching the subtler 
virtues in composition is a set of clear rules such as 'Do not 
begin a sentence with 'and' more than once a month.' Stiff 
and restrictive as such rules are, they can create definite bonds 
in behavior, and definiteness of bonds favors improvement. 

Typewriting is extremely improvable, while handwriting 
is rather repugnant to improvement. The chief reason 
seems to be, as before, that in typewriting the connections 
between letters and words and the required series of move- 



212 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

ments are more noticeable, efficient ones are more readily 
distinguished from inefficient, and efficiency is more readily 
stamped with approval. 

The conditions which I have called the 'interest-series' 
have not been subjected to direct quantitative experiment. 
Consequently few new facts can be reported here about them. 
They have been recognized, though not measured, by the 
psychologists who have directly observed the process of learn- 
ing, as, for example, in the following quotations. 

"The development of this habit of rapt attention or in- 
terest, and the acquisition of a generally favorable feeling-tone 
is as important for learning as the development of any of the 
'habits of manipulation' described above." [Book, '08, p. 
71 f. and p. 74] 

"In the experiments on ball-tossing and on shorthand 
writing, and typewriting, monotony was found to> be an im- 
portant factor in the rapidity with which skill was acquired, 
and the same condition was observed in this work. Periods 
of monotony alternated with periods of pleasure in the work, 
and, at times, of keen enthusiasm. While, as has been said, 
it is not probable that the depression associated with the 
monotony caused the plateaus, it seems quite reasonable that 
it prolonged them. Generally, though not always, this feel- 
ing of discouragement corresponded with the plateaus of the 
curve, and it is an interesting fact that returning pleasure and 
confidence sometimes prophesied a new advance. " [Swift, 
'06, p. 309] 

No one probably doubts that interest in the exercise of 
a function — liking to add, or typewrite, or learn nonsense 
series, or whatever the work may be — favors improvement at 
it. Such statements as those quoted above appeal to our com- 
mon sense as probably true, though they have not been fully 
verified by actually comparing learning with and learning 
without intrinsic interest in the matter learned. 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 213 

No one who has thought the matter out probably doubts 
that interest in the improvement itself — satisfaction at gain, 
and annoyance at backsliding — favors improvement. Such 
statements as the following would not be disputed : 

"It seemed to be the strong desire to write with the utmost 
speed, strengthened in some cases by the thought of the value 
or worth of the experiment, that pushed the learners into 
these new and more economical ways of writing." [Book, 
'08, p. 96] 

"If one continues to commit errors through ignorance of 
the fact that they are errors, he may retard his development 
by falling into habits of unsound play; but if they are noted 
as errors, and especially if they arouse a strong emotion, they 
are eliminated." [Cleveland, '07, p. 303] 

"The mind is (in effective learning) attentive to success 
in the-thing-to-be-done." [Swift, '10 a., p. 151] 

Direct evidence and measurements to verify such state- 
ments are lacking. Evidence of the potency of interest in the 
task and in improvement at it can be got indirectly by com- 
paring (a) the improvement made in a function when the 
experiment is designed to measure improvement and the 
learner is thereby led to be concerned with the gain in his 
score with (b) the improvement made in the same function 
when the experiment is designed to measure the effect of 
drugs, of pauses of different lengths, of the curve of work, 
and the like, and the learner is likely to be less concerned with 
the gain in his score. No one has ever made such a com- 
parison; and it cannot be made conveniently or elegantly. 
Making it as well as may be, we find good reason to assign a 
large favorable effect to interest in the function and in its 
improvement. For the gain seems to be very much greater 
in the former case. 



214 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

The three remaining doctrines of the 'interest series/ 1 
need only mention. The doctrine so brilliantly and earnestly 
defended by Dewey, that school work must be so arranged 
as to arouse the problem-attitude — to make the pupil feel 
needs and work definitely to satisfy these — would probably 
be accepted by all, at least to the extent of agreement that 
pupils will progress much faster if they do approach work 
with needs which its accomplishment satisfies, and with 
problems whose solutions its accomplishment provides. The 
general principle of modern educational theory that school 
tasks must be significant at the time to those doing them — 
that a pupil must have some aim in work to give his work 
meaning — would also probably be accepted by all, at least to 
the extent of belief that pupils will improve faster in work 
the nature and purport of which they comprehend, than in mere 
serial intellectual gyrations accomplished slavishly and me- 
chanically. Most orthodox of all is the doctrine that the 
attentive exercise of a function will produce more rapid im- 
provement than exercise of it with attention directed elsewhere. 

To these five commonly accepted aids to improvement — 
interest in the work, interest in improvement, significance, 
problem-attitude and attentiveness — we may add two that 
would perhaps be disputed — the absence of irrelevant emotional 
excitement, and the absence of worry. 

There is a conflict of theories and of practices with 
respect to the value of emotional fervor in learning. In 
the case of intellectual functions, the balance of opinion is 
that apart from the eager but quiet zest for the work itself 
and for success in it, all emotional excitement is distracting 
— that not only violent love, grief, humiliation and disgust, 
but also even moderate fear of onlookers, exultation at suc- 
cess, and anger at competitors or at oneself, are to some 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 21 5 

extent wastes of energy and preventives of improvement. 

In the case of moral functions, such as learning to work 
energetically, or to tell the truth, or to be just to pupils or 
employers, the balance of opinion is rather toward the view 
that appropriate emotional fervor provides a reinforcement. 
A violent feeling of hate, with idleness as its object, is sup- 
posed to make one form the habit of work; a soul-stirring, 
passionate love of truth favors truth-telling; conscious excite- 
ment over the equality of men creates justice. Certain 
practices in religious and moral revivalism seem even to ad- 
vocate getting men emotionally stirred in any way whatever, 
on the chance of then directing this fervor toward good ends. 

In the case of improvement in skill, the balance turns 
again toward freedom from all the crude emotional states and 
even from all the finer excitements, save the intrinsic satis- 
fyingness of success and the firm repudiation of errors 
which can hardly be called exciting. 

My first statement begged the question by using the 
phrase 'irrelevant excitement,' the conflict between theories 
being precisely about what emotional stirrings are irrelevant. 
The conflict awaits experimental decision, but the evidence 
seems, to me at least, to show ( i) that all emotional excitement 
is, per se, irrelevant, (2) that its only value is as a cause of, 
or symptom of, the satisfyingness of the improvement in 
question and the annoyingness of the failure, and (3) that it 
is inferior as a cause thereof to the same general frame of 
mind minus the emotional excitement. 

The evidence seems to show, first, that we must distinguish 
the general disposition or set or attitude of a man — toward 
the response of flight, attack, avoidance, kindliness, idleness, 
or the like — from the emotional excitement which often does, 
but may not, accompany the attitude. Attention has been 



2l6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

called in the earlier chapters to the fact that the inner con- 
scious perturbations may be left out without injuring the rest 
of the instinctive response, and that the intensity of the former 
may be a very poor measure of the vigor of the latter. In 
the case of acquired habits, the fact is even clearer. The 
real total attitude of zeal for, say, a game of cards — the set 
of mind which makes a person study the game, make sacrifices 
to play it, and the like — may be far more vigorous in a person 
who feels no conscious thrills than in one who plays with an 
inner tempest of felt enthusiasm. The general disposition to 
avoid lying may be far stronger in a man who feels no excite- 
ment when a chance to lie profitably occurs than in a man 
who on such an occasion thrills with conscious disgust or 
disdain. 

In the second place, the original attachments whereby, say, 
'to feel rage at' does imply rejecting and 'to feel love for' 
does imply welcoming, may be broken. The original correl- 
ations between the inner excitements of love, disgust and the 
like and the attitudes of being satisfied and being annoyed may 
be altered, so that either feature of the original behavior- 
complex may exist without the other. A man may boil with 
rage at idleness while idly boiling with rage and being con- 
tent to idly boil. A man may, per contra, be so annoyed by 
idleness as never to indulge in it and always try to cure it 
without, in the traditional sense of the terms, feeling rage or 
disgust or scorn or any other vehement inner passion. 

In the third place, the mere quality of conscious excite- 
ment is astonishingly alike in all the exciting emotions, is 
astonishingly irrespective of the direction of activity, and so 
is, to an astonishing extent, irrelevant to learning (except on 
the theory that a general diffuse indifferent stimulation is 
desirable). We may not admit that excitement and depres- 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 2IJ 

sion, tension and calm, and satisfaction and discomfort, are 
all that there can be to an emotion on its conscious side, but 
we must admit that examination of emotional conditions dis- 
closes that what mostly differentiates equally vehement rage, 
scorn, and elation, say, is the tendency to do different things 
and be satisfied by different resulting states of affairs. What 
differences there are in the merely emotional consciousness in 
question turn out to be minor facts — surprisingly so to one 
brought up in the belief that rage, scorn, and elation, as inner 
states of consciousness, are as different as red, green and blue. 

In the fourth place, the most expert and successful learners 
show least emotional excitement in connection with the exer- 
cise of the function which they are improving. Those who 
achieve most and advance most rapidly, whether in mathe- 
matics, science, music, painting, self-control or devotion, are, 
on the average, characterized by less inner turbulence at their 
work than those of low performance and slow progress. 
Moreover the same individual becomes, on the average, less 
excited in his work, the better he learns to work. The 
natural selection and elimination of methods of mental work 
which goes on in successful workers seems to eliminate emo- 
tional excitement. 

Finally, in the cases where emotional excitement shows 
the greatest probability of being necessarily bound to rapidity 
of improvement, the excitement is not great, and seems to be 
produced by the interest and success rather than to produce 
them. Some excitement is of course produced by any mental 
activity, just as restraint from all activity tends to produce 
depression. Also both satis fyingness in general and success 
in particular are exciting. But being stimulated by working 
well is theoretically and practically a very, very different fact 
from working well because of emotional stimulation. 



2l8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

All the facts concerning the relation of emotional excite- 
ment to improvement therefore seem to be explained best 
by supposing that the interest in the function's exercise and 
improvement is the active force — emotional excitements being 
indirectly of value if they produce interest, and of value as 
symbols in so far as they are produced by it. They probably 
do not produce effective interest so often as has been sup- 
posed, the dynamic power of each emotion over behavior being 
able to exist without the crude inner excitements. When with- 
out them, the interest is less tiring and distracting, and so 
more efficient. 

Much the same sort of. arguments could be reviewed in 
the case of worry or tension. Other things being equal, 
tension or worry simply wastes energy and distracts the mind, 
offering so much friction to overcome. Zeal, satisfaction at 
success and annoyance at errors, can be present with a relieved 
state of mind as well as with one wrought up to tension by 
emulation, dread of failure and the like; better, in fact, for 
the independence of interest from its crude primitive tensions 
is even more easily shown than its independence from primi- 
tive excitements. It is true that some individuals seem to 
need to be made to worry in order to be led to work, but 
the only real and economical cure for their defect lies in 
arousing greater intrinsic interest by better motives rather than 
by more tension — in better mental nourishment, as it were, 
rather than an increased dose of a drug. 

Active mental life in the prosecution of intellect, morality, 
and skill can go on with no greater excitement than its own 
progress provides and with no greater tensions than the 
cheerful alertness of quiet interest. Emotional peace and 
relaxation seem indeed, as I interpret the facts of behavior, 
to be, in and of themselves, always favorable to improvement. 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 219 

EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 

Under the Educational Conditions of improvement all 
the conditions which school authorities provide might be 
treated. Their arrangement of the school program would 
then lead us back to conditions of time of day, length of 
practice periods and intervals and the like which have been 
described under External Conditions. Their management of 
heat, light, and ventilation, their isolation of children affected 
by contagious diseases, and the like, would lead us back to 
the Physiological Conditions. Their selection and arrange- 
ment of subject-matter and their methods of teaching would 
lead us back to the Psychological Conditions of interest, free- 
dom from worry, easy identification of bonds and the like, 
which have just been described. The relation of the time- 
schedule and school hygiene to improvement need not be 
discussed here, but the relation of selection and arrangement 
o,f subject-matter and of methods of guiding the pupils' re- 
sponses to their rate of improvement will give a useful review 
and clarification of certain principles already stated, and 
introduce us to a new and important one. 

Assuming the acceptance of a certain aim for a pupil's 
exercise of a given function, the selection, arrangement and 
presentation of subject-matter, and the approval, criticism and 
amendment of the pupil's responses, are means of getting the 
pupil (1) to try to form certain bonds rather than others, 
(2) to form them in a certain order, (3) to identify more 
easily* the bonds he is to try to form, (4) to be more satisfied 
at the right bond, and more unready to repeat the wrong bonds, 
(5) to be more satisfied by the general exercise of the function, 

* 'More easily' means throughout, 'more easily than he would have 
done if left to his own devices.' 



220 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

and (6) to be more satisfied by general improvement in it. 
Educational effort of any sort will show these six func- 
tions. I choose a few illustrations at random. The question 
concerning the desirability of giving the pupil lists of answers 
to his examples and problems in arithmetic is a case of balanc- 
ing (3) and (4) against (1). If the answers are there the 
pupil can tell what he is to do and whether he has done it 
better, but he may cheat—that is, form no right bonds at all. 

The main changes of the last score of years in the teach- 
ing of modern languages in this country offer one huge 
illustration of (1) and (2). In modern-language teaching 
we have changed from one selection and ordering of bonds 
to another— from arranging the subject-matter as a set of 
general principles and paradigms in a grammatically con- 
venient system, with minor exercises applying this system to 
reading, writing, and speaking, to arranging it as a multitude 
of separate usages in an order determined largely by interest 
and the opportunity offered for the formation of associations 
in the way in which they will be used. 

The various 'methods' in teaching beginners to read 
differ according to which bonds, and which order of bonds, 
they favor. The diacritical marks have been dropped from 
phonic drills, because it became clear that the gain from (3) 
the pupil's knowledge of just what bonds he was to form was 
outweighed by (1) the fact that the bonds formed were not 
nearly so valuable as bonds leading from the sight of a 
syllable as it appeared in ordinary print. Beginning with a 
real story such as the Three Bears, rather than with isolated 
words and short easy sentences, is advocated on the ground 
that the gain from (4), (5) and (6) outweighs the loss in 
(2) and (3). The acting out in movement what is read, 
and the statement of it by the pupil in his own words, are 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 221 

found profitable, not only because of the interest they add, 
but also because they teach the beginner (3) that reading is 
connecting not only sounds, but meanings, with certain black 
and white visual details. 

The use of drills with a time-limit in arithmetic proves 
useful especially because of (6). The power of good read- 
ing to improve a pupil's speech and writing is a witness to 
(3) and (4), and also, by a connection not often recognized, 
to (1). The connection is through inner speech; since the 
pupil, in at least eight cases out of ten, says to himself what 
he reads, and says to himself what he is going to write, he is 
being actually drilled somewhat in good speaking and writing 
by his reading. 

'Home' geography as an introduction in place of the proofs 
of the earth's oblate sphericity, was a change in (2) due 
to a just suspicion that (1) the bonds formed in the older 
introductions were often merely verbal, and that the process 
of making them required very remote and artificial means 
to (4), (5) and (6). 

The educational guidance of learning emphasizes the 
kind of bonds formed more than does the unaided practice of 
the learner left to himself. The graded, propaedeutic and 
ancillary exercises of a good text-book in arithmetic, for 
example, and its variety of drills and applications, represent 
a range of selection and an amount of rejection of possible 
bonds to be formed that would surprise any one unacquainted 
with the experimentation in the teaching of arithmetic during 
the past four centuries. This emphasis on the kind of bonds 
is wise. There is no surer means to improvement than to 
learn only what is necessary for it ; and no surer waste than to 
form with great labor useless or irrelevant bonds. Yet even 
a gifted learner, in even a function relatively free from 



222 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

false and blind alleys, will," if left to himself, often go astray. 
One new principle is shown by the arrangement of subject 
matter as a condition of improvement, it being, of course, 
the principle of order or sequence of bonds. It might, perhaps, 
as well have been listed among the psychological conditions, 
but is shown more clearly by the organization of text-books 
and courses of study than by the procedures of learners left 
to themselves. 

Contrast in this respect what a pupil eight years old would 
do if left to learn to add a series of four or five numbers like 
4-6, 73, 17, So and 9, as one is left in the ordinary practice- 
experiment, with what he is led to do in school. In the latter 
case, the bonds between the words, one, two, three and four, 
and their meanings as names for collections of certain numbers 
of objects and as names for certain magnitudes in relation to 
certain units, are reviewed, strengthened, broadened and 
refined. Meanwhile similar bonds are created with six, seven, 
eight, nine and ten, and each successive integer is firmly 
associated with 'the preceding integer — and one more/ The 
single additions to those with 9 as the sum are learned and 
verified by counting. The figures (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) are 
meanwhile connected with the words and used to replace 
them in the bonds so far formed. The meaning of adding 
and of equal and the use of the *\\ positions are given 

appropriate connections. The situations 2 1 2 , each accom- 
panied by the addition attitude, are connected each with its 
appropriate series of responses. 

The symbols visual and oral, eleven, 11, twelve, 12, etc., 
up to one hundred, are connected each with its meaning, 
as 'so many tens and so many ones.' An adequate sampling 
of the situations Jf^ JL JLJL.IL- etc,J each accom P an i eci b y 



FACTORS AND CONDITIONS OF IMPROVEMENT 223 

the addition attitude, are connected with their appropriate re- 
sponses, the old single-addition bonds serving. The bonds 
between certain situations and the responses of writing single 
and two-place numbers in columns and adding them are 
formed, along with the bonds of the adding processes them- 
selves. The bonds of column addition without carrying are 

14 34 
21 22 11 22 

extended to situations like _^_?^^andj£ ; and then to situations 

like ^JL J^JLiLndlL- Th e bond between o and 
'not any, no' is formed ; and then the associations : '5 and o 
are 5,' 'o and 4 are 4,' and the like. The bond between 
the sight of o in column addition and 'going ahead as if it 

were not there' is formed, and exercised in examples like 

14 
20 26 10 

2L JL jL. JLarni % ; and so, on and on, through the acquisition 
of bonds up to 18 as a sum, then of bonds with the higher 
decades, the responses here being largely oral. 

These bonds are introduced and exercised partly by count- 
ing by 2's, beginning with o and 1, by 3's beginning with 
o, 1 and 2, by 4's beginning with o, I, 2 and 3, etc. Then 
'carrying' is associated with the essential element with which 
it belongs, care being taken that the numbers to be carried 
include two and three as well as one; and enough special 
bonds involving 'carrying' are formed to give the process 
general utility. Special bonds are made when o is to be 
'written down,' and 1, 2, 3, etc. 'carried.' 

The order of formation of bonds in the systematic training 
of schools is probably often pedantic and over-systematized; 
of the countless orders possible, many may be almost equally 
favorable to improvement; the order resulting from the un- 
planned trials and variations of a learner following . inner 
impulses and outer suggestions with no guidance other than 



224 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

his previous learning and zeal to improve, may be more 
favorable to improvement than any which education has de- 
vised for the training of the function in question. These facts, 
however, do not contradict, but rather illustrate, the state- 
ment that the order of exercise of the particular bonds does 
condition improvement. 



chapter xvi 
Changes in Rate of Improvement 

illustrative cases 

Consider Fig. 43 which gives the number of additions of a 
one-place to a one-place number made in five minutes on each 
of thirty days of practice by four adults (averaged). It is 
clear that the gain in speed is greater for the first than for the 
second half of the practice. There is, in general, a negative 
acceleration shown by the parabolic form of the curve. Con- 
trast this with Fig. 44, which gives the average practice curve 
for twenty-three women students in translating English text 
by replacing each letter by another in accordance with a speci- 
fied 'key.' The gain in speed here during the last half of the 
practice is equal to, or a little greater than, that made during 
the first half. There is zero acceleration or a slightly positive 
acceleration. 

Consider also Fig. 45 which shows the improvement in the 
number of letters per minute read off from the telegraph key's 
clicks in successive tests made during thirty-six weeks of prac- 
tice. There is here a rapid gain for about twelve weeks, then 
a period of very little gain — a so-called 'Plateau,' — and in the 
kst twelve weeks a renewed rapid gain. 

Consider finally Fig. 46. This shows in general a negative 

acceleration such as was very clear in Fig. 43, a 'long-time 

fluctuation' in the shape of a change from rapid gain to very 

slow gain (from the 20th to the 45th hour of practice) fol- 

15 22s 



226 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



lowed by a second period of rapid gain (from the 45th to the 
55th hour of practice), and also many 'short-time -fluctuations' 
or minor ups and down in the curve. If the curves of Figs. 
43, 44 and 45 were replaced by the separate curves for the 



500 


- 




^— », 


400 








300 








5 minutes. 

1 








u 

<L> 








additions 

O 
O 

















u 


, 


» 


1 



50 100 

Amount of practice: in minutes. 

Fig. 43. Improvement in Addition of One-Place Numbers. 



150 



single learners concerned, they too would show similar short- 
time fluctuations. Fig. 47, for example, shows the four indi- 
vidual curves (the four highest up) of which Fig. 43 is the 
average. 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT 



227 




3000 



4000 



Fig. 



1000 2000 

Amount of practice: in seconds. 
44. Average Curve of Improvement of Twenty-three Women Students in 
Substituting Letters for Letters. 



Weeks of practice. 
Fig. 45. Approximate Average Curve of Practice in Telegraphic Receiving. 



228 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 




10 20 30 

Amount of exercise: in hours. 
Fig. 46. Improvement in Typewriting by the Sight Method: Subject X. After 
Book, '08, Plate opposite p. 21. 



500 



H00 



300 



G 
1 

^200 
S 

Q, 



g 




150 



50 100 

Amount of practice: in minutes. 
Fig. 47. Improvement in Addition of One-Place Numbers: Five Adult Women* 
After Wells, '12, Plate II, following p. 82. 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT 229 

These facts — that the rate of improvement changes, be- 
coming* less as practice advances, and showing long-time 
fluctuations such as the 'plateau,' and short-time fluctuations 
from week to week and day to day, appear often in experi- 
mental studies of the improvement of mental functions, and 
may be expected to appear often in the learning of schools, 
trades and professions. 

Such changes in the rate of improvement, that is, the form 
of the practice-curve, are the result of (i) the number of 
bonds, by making (or destroying) which the function is im- 
proved, (2) differences in the ease of formation (or destruc- 
tion) of these bonds, (3) differences in the order of formation 
of the bonds, (4) differences amongst them in effect on the 
score, (5) differences at different periods of the practice, in 
the individual's general power to improve the function, (6) the 
effect of the formation of one bond upon the condition of other 
bonds, (7) the weakening of bonds by disuse, and (8) the over- 
exercise of bonds. The facts can be best understood by con- 
sidering certain specially arranged cases of learning. 

THE CAUSES DETERMINING CHANGES IN THE RATE OF 
IMPROVEMENT 

Case 1. 

Assume: (1) that the total improvement in a function 
from x efficiency to the maximum efficiency is due to a given 
number (n) of bonds to be formed: (2) that each of these 
bonds is equally easy to form, requiring time t at the in- 
dividual's maximum power; and (3) that each of them has 
an equal effect (k) in raising the score. Assume that (2) 
and (3) hold regardless of what order the bonds are formed 
in. Assume: (4) that only one~bond is being formed at 



230 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



any one time in practice, and (5) that no effect on the score 
results from the formation of a bond until it is completely 
formed. Assume (6) that work is always done at maximum 
power and that 'maximum power' is a constant throughout. 

Then the curve of practice will be a pure 'staircase,' with 
equal steps, each of k height, the number of steps being n, 
the total improvement nk, the total time nt. If n = 8, and 
the initial efficiency, x = 4 k, the practice curve will be as in 
Fig. 48, 



x+nKp 

X+7K - 

X*6K 

X+5KJ- 

X+4K 

X+3K 

X+1K 

X+K 

X 



r 



_j 





Fig. 



It 2t 3t 4t 5t 6t 7t 6t 

8. Case I. (See the text for the facts concerning its causation.) 



Case 1 a. 

Assume as in Case 1, except that, in place of (5), it is 
assumed that each equal fraction of time spent at the person's 
maximum power upon any bond is, until the bond is com- 
pletely formed, equally effective on the score. Then, the 
other conditions remaining the same, we have a straight-line 
slope till the limit is reached, as in Fig. 49. 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT 

Case i b. 



231 



Assume as in Case 1 a, except that any number of bonds 
can be being formed in the same time, the power forming one 
bond in time t being able to half form two bonds, or quarter 
form four bonds, or one tenth form ten bonds, etc., in an equal 
time. Then we still have Fig. 49. 




It 2t 3t 4t 5t 6t 7t 8t 

Fig. 49. Cases la and lb. (See the text for the facts concerning its causation.) 



Case 1 c. 

Assume Case 1 a, or Case 1 b, but let n be infinitely large. 
Then we have Fig. 50, in which the straight line representing 
zero acceleration is supposed to extend infinitely. 



232 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

Case II. 



Assume Case I, except that, instead of (2), half of the 
bonds are each just twice as hard to form as the others, in 




Fig. 50. Case Ic. (The real curve in question would continue indefinitely with the 
same slope. See the text for further explanation.) 

the sense of each requiring 2 f at maximum power while the 
others each require 1 t. The form of the practice curve will 
then depend on the order in which the bonds are formed. 
The conditions assumed allow an enormous variety of orders, 
resulting in one particular curve for each particular order.* 
If the easiest bonds are all formed first, the curve will be as 
in Fig. 51. If the hardest are all formed first, the curve will 
be as in Fig. 52. If half of the easiest are formed first, and 
the other half last, the curve will be as in Fig. 53. 

* Though, of course, different orders may produce identical curves. 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT 



233 















1 


1 












I 








4-» 








I 
















X+3K 




1 


H 


















X+2.K 




H 




















X+K 


- r 


J 




















X 


.J 


























1 


J 


j 


T 


1 


1 


1 


1 


1 


1 



It 2t 3t 4t it 8t IDt. I2t 

Fig. 51. Case II: Easier Bonds First. (See the text for explanation.) 



i 


- 






r 1 


j 1 


J 








X>3K 




















X+2K, 




















X 




1 


















1 


1— 


1 1 


. 1 


I 


| 


1 


I 1 



at *t 6t et jot »*t 

Fig. 52. Case II: Easier Bonds Last. (See the text for explanation.) 



234 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 




2t 4t 6t et lOt I2t 

Fig. 53. Case II: Easier Bonds First and Last. (See the text for explanation.) 

So far we have seen that, assuming the bonds to be of 
equal effect on the score, and assuming equal power to learn 
at all times in the learner, the form of the practice curve is a 
result of the number of bonds, of their ease of formation, and 
of their order of formation. The number determines the 
limit of efficiency; the ease and order of formation determine 
the curve by which it is reached. In all the cases so far 
used, 'equal' or 'steady' or 'even' power to improve in the 
function could replace 'maximum' power, and the elimination 
of injurious bonds could replace in whole or in part the 
formation of positive ones, without changing the general effect. 
Also, differences in ease of learning could be used in the 
sense that two bonds or four bonds could be formed simul- 
taneously in say 1 t, as well as in the sense of their being 
formed separately each in half of t or one fourth of t. These 
possible replacements will hold good also of all that follows 
in this chapter. 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT 235 

Now the result of a greater effect of a bond upon the 
score, with equal ease of formation, is the same as that of 
greater ease in formation with equal effect on the score. The 
ease of formation being kept equal, and differences in effect 
on the score being taken, we should get, for each order of 
formation of bonds, a practice curve of a given form. If 
the more potent bonds were learned early, there would be 
negative acceleration in the rate of improvement; if the least 
potent bonds were learned early, the reverse; and so on for 
all the possible orders. If the bonds differ in both ease of 
formation and effect on the score, we have only to estimate the 
net effect on the score of a unit of time spent on each bond, 
and then to determine the curve from the order of formation 
of the bonds. 

For example, assume that there are 8 bonds, a, b, c, d, 
etc., formed in i t, 2 t, 3 t, 4 t, 6 t, 8 t, 12 t, and 16 t, 
respectively, and having, as effects on the score, 40, 20, 10, 
8, 2, 4, 6 and 24, respectively. Then the effect of 1 t on 
the score is 40 if spent on bond a, 10 if spent on bond b, 
3^3 if spent on bond c, 2 if spent on d, y$ if spent on e, 
y 2 if spent on f, j4 if spent on g, and ij4 if spent on h. Then 
each successive t of the practice can have its effect calculated 
provided the order of formation of the bonds is known. 

By differences in the individual's general power to im- 
prove the function are meant of course differences in the 
time taken to form bonds which, were the individual in just 
the same state, would take him equal times to form. A drop 
in the individual's power to learn during any given time, of 
course, lowers the practice curve over that interval of time. 
If, say, by a progressive decay of interest, the power to 
learn was, in successive times, as, 1.0, .9, .8, .7, .6, .5, .4, .3, 
then, in Case I, if (6) is replaced by this progressive decay 



236 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



in general power to learn, we should have, instead of Fig. 
48, Fig. 54. If, by a progressive improvement in health 
or increase in interest, the power to learn was in successive 
times 1., 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, we should have, the 
other conditions being left unchanged, Fig. 55. 





- 






1 ■■ 




1 




_r— ' 


X+3K. 


r - 




X+2K. 


_J 




X + K 
X 


1 











It IX 3t 4t 5t «it 7t at 

Fig. 54. The Influence of Decreasing Power to Learn. (See text.) 

So far it has been assumed that the ease of formation 
and effect on the score of the bonds are independent of the 
order in which the bonds are formed. The third assumption 
of Case I has been left unchanged in all later cases. 

In actual practice both the time taken to form a bond 
and its effect on the score may depend on what bonds have 
previously been formed. The resulting complications in the 
curve of practice could be calculated for any defined effect of 
the previous total or partial formation of any one bond or 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT 



237 



E 



a; 
X+3K 
X+2K 
X+K 
X 



It 2t 3t 4t 5t 6t 7t 8t 

Fig. 55. The Influence of Increasing Power to Learn. (See text.) 

combination of bonds upon the rest. The complications are, 
of course, very, very numerous. 

So far, also, it has been assumed that the effect of any 
bond on the score appears in its totality as soon as the bond 
has been formed (or, in the (a) cases, that each fraction of 
its effect appears as soon as that fraction of its formation 
has been completed). But in real practice it may often occur 
that the full effect of a bond's formation on the score appears 
only after later bonds have been formed. That is, just as 
previously formed bonds may give an ensuing bond a greater 
effect than it would otherwise have had, so sequent bonds may 
enhance the effect on the score of those already formed. This 
effect of bond b o n a preceding bond a could not, on its 



238 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

appearance, be distinguished in the gross result from an in- 
creased potency of b due to the preformation of a; but if b 
could itself, still later, be lost without the enhancement of a 
being lost, the difference between the two relations would 
appear. 

So far, save in the last sentence, it has been assumed that 
after a bond is formed it retains throughout practice its full 
potency and requires, thereafter, zero time. But in fact some 
of the learner's time may be, and usually is, required to keep 
the bond at the condition attained; and some of the learner's 
time may be expended in exercising that bond to an extent 
not required to keep it at the condition attained — that is, in 
over-learning it. We may best consider the effects of time- 
requirement for retentiveness and time-waste in over-learn- 
ing, separately, each in one very simple case. 

Assume, then: (1) that all the work is at equal general 
learning power, (2) that the function improves from x to 
its limit by the addition of twenty bonds, (3) equal in ease 
of formation, taking 1 t each, and (4) equal in effect on the 
score, adding each 1 k to it. Assume (5) that (3) and (4) hold 
regardless of what order the bonds are formed in, (6) that only 
one bond is being formed at any one time, but that (7) each 
bond, after having been formed, requires y 2 t daily to keep 
it at its full strength, and (8) that in the practice, which is of 
4 t daily, time is spent on the older bonds so far as is necessary 
to keep them at their full formation. Assume (9) that each 
fraction of time spent on the formation or preservation of 
a bond has its proportional effect on the score. 

Assume, for convenience in calculation, that, within the 
practice period of 4 t, the loss in old bonds is 0. Assume, that 
is to say, that such loss occurs only from the end of one 
practice period to the beginning of the next. Then : 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT 239 

In period i, the learner would form bonds a, b, c and d, 
rising from x + o to x + 4 k. 

In period 2, he would spend 2 t in preserving a, b, c and 
d, and form e and f, rising from x + 4 k to x + 6k. 

In period 3, he would spend 3 / in preserving a, b, c, d, 
e and f, and form g, rising from x + 6 k to x + 7 k. 

In period 4, he would spend 3^ £ in preserving a to g, 
and half form h, rising from x + 7 & to x + 7^ &. 




4t 8t I2t !6t 20t 24t 26t etc. 

Fig. 56. The Influence of Relearning or of Overlearning. (See text.) 

In period 5, he would spend 3^4 t in preserving a to g 
and the half of h formed or, if we assume no loss by disuse 
until the bond is fully formed, would spend 3^ t as before on 
a to g. Choosing the former alternative* he learns Y\ more 
of h, rising from x + 7^ k to x + 7J4 k. 

*If we chopse the latter, he learns in period 5 the other half of h 
and rises from x -\- 7^ k to x -\- 8 k. 

In period 6 he would spend the entire 4 t in keeping what bonds he 
had, and could never rise above the limit x -\- 8 k, though bonds exis* 
which, if any one man could hold enough of them while he formed the 
rest, would raise the score to x -\- 20 k. 



24O THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

In period 6, he would spend 3% t in preserving a to g 
and the three-fourths of h, and would form one-eighth more 
of h, rising from x + 7^4 k to x + 7% k. So on he would 
go, approaching x -\- 8 k as a limit, as shown in Fig. 56. 

Here we see Case I a, with a perfectly straight slope of 
the curve from o to the limit, turning into a case of pronounced 
negative acceleration, as the consequence of the expenditure 
of time in keeping up bonds after they are formed. And, 
in general, we see that, no matter how slowly bonds are 
weakened by disuse and no matter how time is distributed 
over retention of old and formation of new, the effect of the 
need of partial relearning will be to produce negative accelera- 
tion. Further, if there are enough bonds involved in the 
function, it must, for the same reason, tend to reach a limit of 
efficiency.* 

Consider now the effect of over-learning, in a case where 
all other conditions would produce a straight-slant curve. 

Assume equality of general learning power, equal ease 
of formation of bonds (it being required for each), equal 
effect on the score (1 k) regardless of order of formation, 
one new bond to be formed at any one time, but one-half as 
much time to be spent in useless^ exercise of a bond forever 
after it is formed as was required to form it, fractional 
times spent to count proportionally on the score. Assume, 
that is, the conditions of Case 1 a, plus this over-learning. 
Then, letting each practice period be 4 t, and the number of 

* If new bonds of equal potency on the score were more and more 
easily formed as practice progressed, this tendency might, within an 
individual's life-time, be outweighed. 

t Useless for keeping it up to its full effect, that is ; not necessarily 
useless in general. For the over-learning might be beneficial apart from 
the score in the particular function during the particular practice under 
consideration. 



i 



CHANGES IN RATE OF IMPROVEMENT 24I 

bonds be any number 8 or over, we would find the follow- 
ing history : 

In period i, the learner would form bonds a, b, c and d, 
rising in score from x + o to x + 4 k. 

In period 2, he would spend 2 t in over-learning or useless 
exercise of a, b, c and d, and would form e and f. His score 
would rise from x-{~4ktox-{-6k. 

In period 3 he would spend 3 t in over-learning, and form 
bond g. 

The future course of the practice curve would be just 
as in the case where half the time of formation of a bond was 
required to keep it up to the mark. And, in general, over- 
learning, in the sense of useless exercise, always disposes to- 
ward negative acceleration and reaching an unimprovable 
limit. 

Relearning and Overlearning are, in actual practice, re- 
lated in an interesting and important way. Such useless 
exercise of a bond as I have assumed, to make the illustration 
simple and its influence clear, is very rare. The over-exercise 
beyond what is needed to form a bond is in actual practice, 
up to a certain limit, the very exercise which relearns it (or 
keeps it from needing to be relearned) — which brings it back 
to its full effect (or keeps it from falling below it). There 
are more and less economical ways of distributing the time 
devoted to exercise of a bond, once it is fully formed, too 
much exercise at any one time being wasteful by building up 
something which disuse will tear down before any advantage 
is got from it; and too little being likely to make certain 
correlated bonds hard to form. The reader may well com- 
bine the assumptions of the two last described cases in a case 
where each bond tends to lose so much per day as a result of 
16 



242 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

the lapse of time; and to regain (or to be kept from losing) 
so much per unit of practice time as a result of a defined 
amount of exercise of it after it has been once formed. The 
general effect of relearning and over-learning, as they combine 
in actual practice, will be the same as the effect shown for 
either one of them in the artificial conditions assumed in the 
illustration. 

We have seen how (i) the number of bonds, (2 and 3) 
differences amongst them in ease of formation and in effect on 
the score, in combination with (4) the order in which they are 
formed, (5) differences in the individual's general power to 
improve the function at different periods of the practice, (6) 
the relations of changed ease of formation or effect on score 
existing between the bonds already acquired, or those to be 
acquired, and any given bond, (7) the weakening of bonds 
by disuse, and (8) the useless over-exercise of existing bonds 
may produce changes in the rate of improvement, and how 
the kind of change that any defined state of affairs of any of 
these seven sorts will produce can be deduced. 

Every one of these factors could almost certainly be 
illustrated from actual human learning. An examination 
of the various explanations of initial rapid rise, negative 
acceleration, eventual approximation to zero improvement, 
plateaus, and other long-time and short-time fluctuations, 
would, in fact, show one, or another, or some combination of 
two or more, of these eight facts as the condition which the 
author of the explanation really invoked for his particular 
purpose* 



chapter xvii 

The Permanence of Improvement 

deterioration by disuse 

In general, as daily life abundantly shows, the disuse of 
a mental function weakens it, and the amount of weakening 
increases, the longer the lack of exercise. There have been, 
however, a few unfortunate statements made by psychologists 
to the effect that bonds perfect themselves after exercise has 
ceased by a process of mere inner growth or organization. 
So Coover and Angell ['07, p. 336] say that "the common 
belief in beneficial effects of incubation periods on bodily 
activity has been amply confirmed by numerous investigations 
of practice and fatigue," but give neither any evidence, nor 
any reference to any evidence, of the confirmation. Book, who 
does not himself assent to this doctrine of learning to skate 
in the summer and to swim in the winter, describes it as the 
assumption "that the associations previously formed had 
been slowly perfecting themselves unconsciously by some sort 
of neural growth process which completed itself during the 
interval of no practice." ['08, p. 80] 

This doctrine of continuance of improvement after the 
cessation of practice seems to contradict the general rule 
announced above, and would do so if the doctrine were made 
general and consistent. But the advocates of learning to 
skate in summer and swim in the winter would in concrete 

243 



244 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

cases always demand that improvement should have a certain 
large impetus in order to continue without further exercise, 
and would always admit that after a certain length of time 
disuse does not improve, but injures, a function's efficiency. 

No one of them would expect the improvement due to a 
single hour's practice at skating to add an unearned increment 
to itself during the following summer. No one of them would 
expect that the gain from a hundred hours of practice at 
swimming, diving and other aquatic gymnastics would be 
found to have increased or even persisted after twenty years. 
The doctrine asserts the reversal of a general law of for- 
getting under certain circumstances, not the general truth 
of its opposite. 

The doctrine is misleading, the real facts which in a 
measure excuse it being simply : ( i ) that an improvement in 
a function may be masked by fatigue, so that disuse, involv- 
ing rest, produces an apparent gain; (2) that an improvement 
in the strength of desirable bonds may be masked by a 
decrease in their readiness — a drop in interest, a 'going stale,' 
as the athletes say — so that disuse, by doing more good to 
interest than it does harm to the strength of the bonds, pro- 
duces an apparent improvement; (3) that unwise exercise of 
the function, as in worry and confusion or under misleading 
instructions, may form undesirable bonds, whose weakening 
by disuse improves the function. 

We may then dismiss the doctrine of continuance of im- 
provement after the cessation of practice as unsupported by 
direct evidence and contrary to all the general evidence on 
memory. There is always some weakening of bonds, and so, 
under equal conditions of rest and interest, always some 
deterioration of a function, with disuse. In certain cases the 
effect on the score may, however, be very small. Consider 



THE PERMANENCE OF IMPROVEMENT 245 

the very simple function in the reader of being able to tell his 
name when asked 'What is your name?" Even after ten years 
of disuse, perhaps, a slight indecision and delay might be the 
only observable inferiority in the function's efficiency. 

RESULTS OF EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES 

The functions whose deteriorations with disuse have been 
studied most adequately are the rather unimportant* ones 
of reciting at demand a certain series of nonsense syllables, 
and reciting at demand a certain series of sensible words 
forming a stanza of a poem or the like. In these cases a 
certain known amount of time or number of readings has 
produced a certain defined improvement from zero ability to 
the ability to recite the series once (or twice, in some of the 
studies) ; and, after certain known amounts of time have 
elapsed, the amount of time or number of repetitions required 
to restore the ability previously acquired has been measured. 
If, for example, a man learns ioo nonsense series, and relearns 
10 of them after i hour, 10 after i day, 10 after 10 days, 
10 after 30 days, 10 after 1 year, and so on, we have means 
of estimating certain points of the -curve of deterioration or 
forgetting for this function in this man. 

The studies in question are those of Ebbinghaus, Rados- 
sawljewitsch, Magneff and Bean. 

Ebbinghaus ['85, p. 94 ft".], measuring the amount remem- 
bered by the saving of time in relearning, found that a 
series of nonsense syllables when studied until he could just 

* If the curves so found could be assumed to hold good for all 
functions at all stages of improvement, their characteristics would be of 
very great importance, but, as will be shown, these curves cannot be 
at all generally assumed. 



246 
100 — i 

80 — 

g 

"S 

.2 

g 40 — 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



20 — 



12 6 14 20 

Interval between learning and relearning: in days. 



30 



Fig. 57- 



The Curve of Forgetting for Nonsense-Series Learned to the Point of One 
Successful Reproduction, in the Case of Ebbinghaus. 



100 -1 




10 

Interval between learning and relearning: 



20 

days. 



30 



Fig. 58. The Curve of Forgetting for Nonsense-Series Learned to the Point of 
Two Successful Reproductions, as Reported by Radossawljewitsch. 



THE PERMANENCE OF IMPROVEMENT 247 

repeat it correctly, left an after effect as shown in Fig. 57. 
At the end of 19 minutes, 42 per cent as much time was 
required to relearn the series as to learn it in the first place ; 
at the end of 63 minutes, 56 per cent as much time; at the 
end of 8^4. hours, 64 per cent as much time; and so on. The 
percentages of time saved over total relearning are thus 58, 
44, 36 and so on. Disuse here seems enormously potent. 
In a similar experiment, except that the nonsense series were 
learned more thoroughly — namely, until they could be re- 
peated correctly twice in succession, Radossawljewitsch ['07] 
found the curve of forgetting to be of the same general 
form as Fig. 57, but with a less intense effect of disuse. His 
results are shown in Fig. 58. 

Bean ['12, p. 19 ff.], using the learning and relearning 
of a series of new letters and measuring the loss in a fashion 
too intricate for description here, found that the loss was rapid 
at first and then slow, his score for the errors made at various 
dates in tests of knowledge of the nine letters being : one day, 
3.0; four days, 4.15; seven days, 5.35; fourteen days, 5.5; 
twenty-one days, 5.55; twenty-eight days, 5.9. The first day's 
disuse thus produces as many errors as the following twenty- 
seven days. 

Radossawljewitsch had sensible series (eight lines of 
poetry making about ninety syllables) learned to the point 
of two perfect recitals, and then relearned after a certain in- 
terval. Combining with his results those obtained by Magneff, 
we have, as a provisional curve of forgetting for poetry, that 
shown in Fig. 59. 

In sharp contrast to the extensive rapid forgetting of 
nonsense lists and verses of poetry stand the facts found for 
tossing balls and typewriting by Swift, Schuyler, Book and 
Rejall. 



248 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 




I 10 20 

interval between learning and relearning: 



days. 



Fig. 39. The Approximate Curve of Forgetting for Poetry Learned to the Point of 
Two Successful Reproductions. Drawn from Data of Radossawljewitsch and Magneff. 

In the case of tossing balls, the following facts are re- 
ported by Swift ['03, '05 and '10] : Subject A, having begun 
with a score of about 4, and having reached, in the last six 
days of forty-two days of practice, average scores of 50, 82, 
92, 88, 68 and 105, was retested every thirty days for 
five months, and attained average scores of 70, 80, 140, no, 
and 120. Being then tested after four hundred and eighty- 
one days, he attained an average score of 119. Being then 
tested after over four years, he attained an average score of 
5; on the following day, one of 10; and on successive follow- 
ing days, average scores of 18, 20, 26, 35, 66, 60, 45, 100, 
and 160. Subject E, having begun with a score of about 10, 
and having reached, in the last six days of fourteen days of 
practice, average scores of 31, 53, 80, 105, 115 and 127, was 
retested every thirty days for five months,* and attained 



* There was some practice with the left hand during the first thirty- 
days interval in the case of both A and E. 



THE PERMANENCE OF IMPROVEMENT 249 

average scores of 115, 145, 155, 230, and 325. Being next 
tested after an interval of 463 days, he attained an average 
score of 152. 

In the course of forty-five hours of practice at typewriting, 
Swift had risen from a score of 350 words per hour to one of 
1050. Two years and thirty-five days later he was retested, 
scoring in ten hours (one per day) 700, 860, 860, 970, 1023, 
1010, 1005, 1040, 990, 1 100. The score of errors is not 
reported, though Swift notes an "increasing liability to error." 

Rejall tested the permanence of the ability to typewrite 
acquired in the course of about thirty hours of practice, after 
an interval of three and a half years. In the last two weeks 
of the learning, he wrote at a rate of 25 words a minute with 
4 errors per hundred words copied; in the memory test, he 
scored, in the first five days, 18.75 words per minute with 
8 errors per hundred words, 18.9 with J 1 /*, errors, 21 with 
6 2 /$ errors, 22.1 with 5 errors, and 22.5 with 8^3 errors. 
On continuing the practice, five hours brought him to very 
nearly the same ability that thirty hours had been required 
to attain originally, his average score for the six days after 
five hours of relearning being 26 words per minute with 5^2 
errors per hundred words. 

Book found an even greater permanence of improvement in 
typewriting, there being so sudden a rise in the course of the 
memory test as to carry efficiency to a point beyond the best 
score made in the original learning, though a year and five 
months had elapsed. 

The permanence of the improvement made by practice in 
writing words, changing each letter to a number or a differ- 
ent letter, by practice in typewriting of a very simple sort (one 
same sentence involving only seven letters), by practice in 
checking A's or numbers, and by practice in addition, has been 



250 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

measured. The permanence in these cases is much greater 
than that found for learning nonsense-series to the point of 
one or two perfect reproductions, and much less than that 
found for ball-tossing and typewriting. As a sample we may 
take the following: Six adults who had practiced adding for 
150 minutes in January to April, 19 10, were given two tests 
of five minutes each in December, 19 12. Their average 
scores (additions for five minutes) on the first two days of 
the original practice were 234 and 274. On the last day 
of the original practice, their average score was 447. On the 
two days of the memory test, the averages were 343 and 375. 
In the number-checking, the corresponding scores were : 56 
and 73 o's marked per minute in the first and second five 
minutes of the original learning: 107 in the last five minutes; 
and 74 and 80 in the first and second five minutes two and 
two-thirds years later. 

Kirby ['13], who measured the improvement made by 
fourth-grade pupils by sixty minutes of practice in addition,* 
retested many of these pupils with a fifteen-minute period at 
the end of June. This was from three to twelve weeks after 
die last trial of the regular practice. There was no loss, 
or more properly, no more loss from disuse than was com- 
pensated for by the fifteen minutes of practice. He retested 
many of them also early in September after the vacation. In 
this test of fifteen minutes the pupils did not do so well as 
in the fifteen-minute test at the end of the regular practice 
or in the test at the end of June. From the first to the 
last fifteen-minute test of 75 minutes of practice in April 
and May, these pupils had gained about 15 examples. In 
a fifteen-minute test at the end of June they increased this 

* Under the conditions described on page 193. 



THE PERMANENCE OF IMPROVEMENT 251 

gain to about 17. In a fifteen-minute test early in September, 
it fell to 10. 

From 20 to 45 minutes of drill in September brought 
the gain back to about its status at the end of the original 
75 minutes of practice. The accuracy remained closely the 
same throughout. 

In the case of division, pupils who, from the first to the 
last 10-minute period of sixty minutes practice, had gained 
35 examples, maintained and slightly increased this gain in 
a test at the end of June two weeks later. In a 10-minute 
period early in September, this gain had fallen to 17^ ex- 
amples. From 15 to 35 minutes of drill was required to 
bring it back. 

Dr. Kirby is of the opinion that the loss between June 
and September is in part a consequence, not of the mere 
disuse of the functions in question, but of a general rest- 
lessness and unsteadiness due to the change from vacation 
habits to school routine. 

General conclusions 

The facts of the previous section give a just picture of 
what has been found by investigators of the permanence of 
improvement. They do not enable us to give any simple 
comprehensive account of the rate and changes in the rate of 
deterioration. Indeed the reader may complain that about 
the only facts that they display with any unanimity and 
brilliancy are the apparent complexity and variability of 
deterioration by disuse and our lack of knowledge about it! 

These facts themselves are not futile, however. What 
knowledge we have and what we lack may both serve to 
protect us against assuming, as educational practice has often 



252 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

done, that all learning wanes after the fashion that learning 
of the informational type does, and against assuming, as. 
theorizers about practice are likely to do, that there is some 
magical curve of forgetting which every function at every 
stage will somewhat closely follow. Further, the very great 
difference between the effect of say a year's disuse upon one's 
score in typewriting and its effect upon one's score in re- 
citing a nonsense syllable or stanza of a «poem emphasizes 
certain important facts about learning. 

Over-learning. — The first of these facts is that over-learn- 
ing from the point of view of immediate proficiency may not 
be over-learning for proficiency a day or month or year hence. 
It is well known that in learning series of nonsense syllables 
and the like, more time is required to learn the series so as 
to be able to give it twice than to learn the series so as to 
just barely give it. Radossawljewitsch indulged in over- 
learning if learning equals "to be able just barely to give," 
and the greater permanence in the results of his subjects than 
Ebbinghaus found may be due to this. Suppose now that 
a series had been still further over-learned, being repeated say 
a thousand times. It would then have shown enormously 
greater permanence. 

Now, roughly speaking, typewriting each new page is 
over-learning certain of the features of writing previous 
pages (writing 'the,' 'is,' 'of,' 'he' and manipulating the spacer 
and carriage, for example) ; typewriting at a higher rate is 
over-learning certain of the features of writing at a lower rate 
(for example, a combination of movements that, by being 
occasionally and slowly associated with seeing 'after that the' 
or 'in the midst,' raised speed to the lower level, will raise 
it higher by being invariably and quickly associated there- 



THE PERMANENCE OF IMPROVEMENT 253 

with) ; typewriting with one percent of errors is overlearning 
certain features of 'writing at the same rate with two per- 
cent of errors/ The practice which serves to form a few new 
desirable bonds results in the strengthening of many old ones 
in ways or to degrees that do not show in the score at the 
time, but do show in the length of time that these bonds will 
persist. Over-learning then doubtless accounts for a part of 
the less effect of disuse on the score in the case of the type- 
writing of Swift, Schuyler and Book than on the score in 
the case of knowledge of nonsense series, poems, and vocab- 
ularies. 

Over-learning is an important fact because if the improve- 
ment of any one of the functions that have been studied in 
any of the last five chapters could be analyzed into its ele- 
ments — into the bonds that have been added and subtracted — 
a very large percentage of the bonds added would be found 
to have been at any stage over-learned in the sense of being 
stronger than was needed to produce the score produced at 
that stage, all other bonds remaining as they were. Thus, 
even in a nonsense series, as ordinarily studied, the first and 
last syllables are a little over-learned by the time the middle 
members are barely learned. In telegraphic receiving, the 
bonds connecting certain series of clicks with words like 
'is,' 'of,' 'the' and 'and' are over-learned by the time that 
the bonds connecting other series of clicks with rarer words 
are barely learned. The economical arrangement of learn- 
ing depends very largely on the extent to which this is a 
waste avoidable by better methods of learning and, on the 
other hand, the extent to which it is necessary in order that 
the bond itself may hold until, in the future course of practice, 
it gets added exercise; and in order that other bonds may 
be more easily formed and retained. 



254 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

The Possible Advantage of Direct Sensori-Motor Bonds 
in Permanence. — It is perhaps the case that functions whose 
improvement consists in responding more surely and more 
quickly by some movements of the muscles to some sense 
presentations with which the former are to be bound with few 
intermediaries, retain their improvement better than functions 
where the surety and speed of bonds from one internally 
initiated event in the brain to another are the main facts to 
be improved. Skating, dancing, swimming, typewriting in an 
advanced stage, on the one hand, and the recital of poems or 
nonsense series, knowledge of chemistry or geology, the ability 
to translate English into German, and typewriting at the begin- 
ning, on the other, illustrate and suggest this contrast. 

It is possible that the secondary or so-called higher con- 
nections in the nervous system which correspond to the 
association of "ideas" are fundamentally less retentive of 
modification produced in them by learning than are the more 
primary and direct neural bonds which correspond to the 
association of sensory situation and motor response. Know- 
ledge may be by the nature of man's neurones less retainable 
than skill. Roughly, as a matter of general observation, it 
seems to be. 

The Relation of a Function's Organisation to Permanence 
of Improvement. — A few illustrations will serve to show the 
possibility that the organization or arrang-ement of a function's 
bonds might be influential in determining the effect of disuse 
upon a man's score. Contrast, for example, the ability to re- 
produce in order a list of twelve unrelated words (say, here- 
after, president, designate, etc.) with the ability to give these 
same words when the German words which they trans- 
late are presented, — supposing the series and the twelve pair- 



THE PERMANENCE OF IMPROVEMENT 255 

ings to have both been learned by mere mechanical repetition, 
and to be tested by the requests "Give series 23" and "Give 
the English meanings of . ., . ., .., .., etc." In each case 
there are twelve main bonds. In the former these are from 
series 23 to hereafter, from hereafter to president, from 
president to designate, etc. ; and in so far as the permanence 
of the ability depends on these main bonds, the failure of 
any one of them reduces the score from that point on to zero t 
the rest of the chain vanishing with the broken link. In. 
the latter case the main bonds are independent, each being' 
permitted to do its full service for the score. On the other 
hand, in the former case there are weaker subsidiary bonds 
between the 'Series 23' and all the members^ between each 
later member and all following it, and even slight bonds 
leading from each member to those closely preceding it. 

Apparently these subsidiary bonds do not serve well 
enough in resisting disuse to counterbalance the gain due to 
independent action of each main bond. For, apparently, if 
a serial twelve and twelve pairs are each learned to the point 
of one or two perfect tests, the former will be sooner for- 
gotten. 

Contrast also the ability to typewrite Latin that is gained 
in 100 hours study by an English-reading adult with the 
ability to translate it that he gains in an equal amount of 
time (both having been acquired by an adult who knows 
English well). The actual number of bonds is perhaps 
greater in the former case, since each letter has acquired many 
different movements according to the preceding letters, and 
each word of many hundreds has acquired a total coordin- 
ation corresponding to it, while a hundred hours of trans- 
lation does not give a very wide vocabulary or knowledge 
of forms. But in the former case the bonds help each other 



256 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

out as they do not in the latter; the bonds with words are 
groupings and modifications of letter-habits ; the various bonds 
leading from the same letter according to its antecedents in 
the copy are variants containing common elements. The 
organization by roots and endings does somewhat the same 
service for translation, but to nothing like the same extent. 
It seems likely that, apart from over-learning of any one 
bond as a total and apart from any possible superior per- 
manence of direct sensori-motor connections, such an organ- 
ized hierarchy of bonds consisting of new combinations of, 
and minor modifications of, old elements, would resist disuse 
better than the much less closely knit set of bonds from words 
to meanings which a hundred hours of study of Latin secures. 

Learning Not to Forget. — We may conceive of disuse 
as a combination of forces which attack the bonds upon which 
a function's efficiency depends, making breaches, as it were, in 
the walls which exercise has built up, or conquering certain 
outposts and redoubts which exercise had won. We may 
conceive of relearning as the repair of these breaches, the re- 
capture of these redoubts, the restoration of what was lost 
during the interval of disuse. Now if the attacks of disuse 
are at all specialized, relearning will be profitable in propor- 
tion as it is specialized — makes repairs where needed. The 
mere allround equal strengthening of bonds will be less potent 
protection against future attacks from disuse than a special 
strengthening of those spots whose weakness has been shown 
by their surrender to past attacks. Relearning what has 
been forgotten will then tend to be learning what is most 
likely to be forgotten and consequently most needs to be 
learned. 

Now in such practice as the typewriting or ball-tossing 



THE PERMANENCE OF IMPROVEMENT 257 

there is automatically provided by the conditions of the work 
a rather large amount of such specialized relearning. Learn- 
ing is guided by the score. The learner does strengthen his 
walls especially where the interval since the last practice has 
torn them down ; for otherwise he makes less progress. He 
is, by the guidance of the score, protected somewhat against 
unnecessary over-learning. 

The difference between his learning and that in the case 
of memorizing a nonsense series is partly that he learns not 
to forget by relearning what has been forgotten until it is 
so well learned as to withstand the disuse of at least a day or 
so.. He guards against future attacks by unconsciously try- 
ing one remedy after another for past attacks until he becomes 
able to withstand them. 

In learning a nonsense series that can barely be learned 
in five minutes, ten minutes' worth of further learning is 
more potent for future permanence if it is applied a day later 
than if it is applied at the time, and still more potent if it 
is applied in divisions of just enough time to relearn on 
successive days. There are several factors operative in pro- 
ducing this effect, but the application of exercise so as to 
regain what has been lost rather than promiscuously is almost 
certainly one. For the same reason the concentration of 
exercise in learning vocabularies upon the pairs upon which 
at any given test one fails is economical for future permanence. 

Deterioration as a Result of Competition. — So far the 
effect of disuse in and of itself has been our concern. But 
when a function lies idle during an interval of time its situ- 
ations may acquire competing bonds, either alternative or 
opposite to those constituting the function. The time in ques- 
tion is occupied somehow; and the future fate of the function 
17 



258 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

depends upon how it is occupied as well as how long it is. 

The situations composed of the typewriting 'set' of mind, 
being seated before the machine with copy, and the special 
words thereof, for example, acquire as totals no alternative 
bonds ; also their old bonds are little interfered with by what- 
ever bonds the words of the copy may have acquired as ele- 
ments in other total situations of reading, translating, copying 
by hand and the like. The situations composed of the 're- 
calling nonsense-series set,' sitting before certain apparatus 
and the recall of the several syllables of designated series 
also acquire as totals no alternative bonds (provided no other 
series involving the same or closely similar syllables are 
learned or relearned during the interval) ; but their syllable 
elements are probably more interfered with by their occur- 
rence in different series in reading and speech. If other 
nonsense series containing some of the same or closely similar 
syllables are learned or relearned during the interval, the 
interference is greater. It is obvious that, other things being 
equal, the less the interference, the greater will be the per- 
manence over the same interval. 

On the whole, then, the scanty and apparently inconsistent 
facts about the rate of forgetting and changes in it perhaps 
agree in revealing that the amount of forgetting, and the form 
of the curve of forgetting, in each case, are consequences of 
the nature of the bonds, the degree of over-learning of each, 
and of each of the elements of each, their relations, and the 
competing bonds which whatever activities fill the interval 
establish. No one 'curve of forgetting' could then be expected 
for different functions at similar stages of advancement or 
for the same function at different stages of advancement, 
much less for different functions at different stages of ad- 
vancement. 



chapter xviii 

The Influence of Improvement in One Mental Func- 
tion upon the Efficiency of Other Functions 

facilitation and inhibition 

The bonds whose strengthening and weakening constitute 
the changes in condition of mental functions in a man are 
not each utterly independent of the rest, but are related to 
form the obvious dynamic unity which the intellect, character, 
taste and skill of any one man displays. What happens to 
any one bond makes differences to other bonds in the same 
man that it does not make to those bonds in a different man. 
The amount of difference made ranges from cases where a 
change in one bond causes or constitutes an almost equal 
change in another to cases where the change in one produces 
approximately zero changes in the other. The nature of the 
difference made ranges from- cases where the whole effect of 
the strengthening or weakening of one bond acts to produce 
a corresponding effect on another to cases where the whole 
effect of its strengthening is to weaken, and of its weakening 
to strengthen, the other. 

We may use the terms facilitation, reinforcement, assist- 
ance or positive similar change for cases where a strengthening 
of one bond produces more or less strengthening in another, 
and the term negative similar change for cases where a 
weakening of one bond produces more or less weakening in 

259 



a6o THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

another. It is probable that a relation of positive similar 
change between two bonds implies the existence of the relation 
of negative similar change between them. We may use the 
terms inhibition, opposition or positive opposite change for 
cases where a strengthening of one bond produces more or 
less weakening of another, and the term negative opposite 
change for cases where the weakening of one bond produces 
more or less strengthening in another. It is probable that 
the former relation between two bonds implies the latter also. 
The terms facilitation, reinforcement and inhibition have been 
somewhat specialized in use by psychologists so that the un- 
ambiguous similar change and opposite change are the safest 
to use. 

I shall in general restrict discussion to the positive actions, 
since whatever general theory accounts for them probably 
accounts for the corresponding effect of the weakening of the 
one bond upon the other. 

Similar Change 

The strengthening of one bond produces a similar change 
in another when the two are in part identical — when, that is, 
the two situations are in part identical and these identical 
elements in the situations have (in toto or in respect to some 
of their elements) identical responses bound to them. 

We may distinguish the following amounts of identity : 

Entire Similar Change by Composition of Totals. 

The bonds A B C-> i, 2, 3, and X Y Z -> 48, 49, 50, 
being strengthened, the bond A B C X Y Z ->- 1, 2, 3, 48, 
49, 50 is strengthened. Thus, learning that □ is square and 
that a certain appearance is black facilitates the learning that 
B is a black square. 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 



26l 



Partial Similar Change by Insertion of Totals. 

The bond A B C -^- 1, 2, 3 being strengthened, the bond 
A B C X Y Z->- 1, 2, 3, 48, 49, 50 is strengthened. Thus, 
knowing the meaning of half of a compound word facilitates 
the learning of the entire word's meaning. 

Entire Similar Change by Composition of Elements. 

The bonds A B C->- 1, 2, 3 and X Y Z->-48, 49, 50 
being strengthened, the bond A X->- 1, 48 is strengthened. 
Thus, phonic drills with sit, sat, sun, say, saw, some and with 
pick, lick, kick, Dick, facilitate the process of learning to read 
sick. 

Partial Similar Change by Insertion of Elements. 

The bond A B C-^- 1, 2, 3 being strengthened, the bond 
A X Y->- 1, 48, 49 is strengthened. Thus, the first half of 
the drills just mentioned would be beneficial alone. 

In the illustrations used for these four cases, the corn- 
position out of old bonds or the insertion of an old bond 
is fairly easy to deduce from easily observable behavior; but 
such dependence of one situation-response bond upon others 
may be to any extent a hidden event within man's neurones. 

As a consequence, there may be Similar Change of bonds 
due to identities that are beyond our direct cognizance; and, 
on the other hand, there may be a failure of similar change 
where our superficial observation expects it, because a 
similarity of result is brought about by two sets of bonds 
which have no identical element. As an illustration of the 
first of these two facts, we may take the possible case of the 
strengthening of the bonds productive of accuracy in judging 
the differences of pairs of weights by the increased strength 
of the bonds productive of accuracy in judging the differences 
of pairs of colors. If the facilitation should be found to 
occur, we would perhaps be at a loss to locate the identity, 



262 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

beyond a cryptic assignment of it to 'attentiveness to small 
shocks of difference.' As an illustration of the second fact, 
we may take the case of the bonds between the thought of, 
say, an elephant, a map or a certain room, and clear, vivid 
visual images of these things. Such bonds are found* to 
have very little or no favorable effect on the bonds leading 
from the same situations to correct judgments about, say, the 
elephant's external anatomy, the features of the map, or the 
contents of the room. 

Tliere are three cases of similar change which are of special 
practical importance, which we may call facilitation by re- 
organization, by transferred set or attitude, and by transferred 
neglect. 

When the bonds acquired in learning vocabularies assist 
the learner in reading sentences, or when the letter habits of 
telegraphy and typewriting enable the learner to form the 
word habits, the old bonds are not compounded just as they 
are, nor, on the other hand, are the new bonds learned 
separately, as it were, on top of the old ones. The new ones 
use the old ones, but by reorganizing them through 'short- 
circuiting' and other forms of associative shifting, and by trying 
and selecting from various amalgamations and modifications 
of them. 

It may be said in opposition that this last is not a proper 
case of similar strengthening, since the formation of the letter 
habits does not actually form the word habits, but only makes 
them easier to form. From a certain pedantic point of view 
this may be admitted, but, as has been shown, it is not wise 
to try to restrict the strengthening of a bond to cases where 
the strengthening manifests itself immediately in a change in 

*For example, by the author ['07], by Betts ['09], and by Ruger ['10]. 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 263 

the score. Strengthening has been used in this volume to 
equal greater ease of formation to X strength as well as an 
obvious change from Y strength up— to mean nearer to X 
as well as further from Y. And this more catholic use is 
advisable. 

When an animal, by experience in securing food by opera- 
ting mechanical contrivances, becomes more active in the 
tenth puzzle-box than it was in the first, or when a man, 
in the course of noun-checking experiments, acquires a wary, 
business-like scrutiny of the lines with no halts or dawdlings, 
and maintains it when checking verbs or prepositions, — we 
have facilitation by the transfer of a set or attitude. Ebert 
and Meumann ['05] report that the mere decision to accept 
certain work as interesting improved it; Fracker ['08] found 
that the adjustment to naming the order of four intensities 
of the same tuning-fork (as 1, 2, 3, 4 for the order from least 
to greatest intensity, or 4, 3, 2, 1 for the reverse, or 1, 2, 4, 
3, and the like) helped greatly to strengthen the bonds needed 
to permit the learner to give the correct order after an interval 
filled with another task. Ruger ['10] found that the attitude 
of confidence begot of success in solving puzzles aided in 
the solution of others, and gives other illustrations of the 
same general facilitation by transferred attitude or set of 
mind. 

A large part of learning is dropping out and driving out 
harmful or irrelevant bonds, and the weakening of these may 
be of advantage not only to the particular bond in whose favor 
they were driven out, but to other bonds whose formation or 
action they would otherwise have impeded. The transfer of 
tendencies to neglect is as real as the transfer of positive action. 
Learning a score of series of nonsense syllables is found to 
facilitate learning another score, partly because the irritation 



264 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

and distaste which are originally bound to the task are dis- 
joined from it by the early practice. 

Opposite Change 

Strengthening the bond between a given situation, or situ- 
ation element, A, and the response 1, weakens the opposite 
bond — between A and the response c Opposite of if Both the 
truth and the value of this statement depend upon a definition 
of 'Opposite.' The statement is true, but valueless, if we mean 
by it the tautology that the opposite response to 1 is one whose 
connection with A weakens the connection of 1 with A. Yet 
it is hard to find any valuable universal criterion of opposite- 
ness in bonds. When the response 1 is an observable move- 
ment of the body, the opposite response may be roughly defined 
as the one which undoes the work done by 1 — as by moving 
the body or part of the body in the opposite direction, or by 
expelling forth from the mouth what has just been taken into 
it. In a similar way, I should define as opposite any two 
bonds in the neurones of which each undoes the work done 
by the other. This definition, though, in my opinion, sound 
and destined to be helpful, is not of much value in our present 
ignorance of what bonds in the neurones correspond to any 
given fact of behavior.* 

*I judge that our ordinary usage extends this definition much farther 
and more loosely, calling any two responses opposite when, the conditions 
outside the man being the same, either undoes the work done by the 
other. Thus, if conditions remain the same, assent undoes the social 
work of dissent, though the muscular movements are not opposite as 
such. The thoughts, 'Subtract 2' and Tt is not black/ are thus the 
opposites of 'Add 2' and Tt is black/ in the sense of undoing certain 
intellectual work done by them. But, with this extended usage of the 
term, it is far from sure that any general statement of opposite change 
w true. A child, for example, who is taught to say, on seeing a certain 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 265 

Until we know what the actual behavior is in the neurones 
in the case of a bond, our attempts to define the kind of 
bonds which will mutually annihilate each other, thus turn 
into uninstructive tautologies or unsafe prophecies. Mean- 
while we do know concretely that certain pairs of bonds 
do thus produce, one on the other, opposite change, — do 
manifest simon-pure inhibition. Two bonds from the same 
situation-element to motor responses of opposite or antagon- 
istic effect, as above described, are a stock example of such 
a pair. Often confused with such cases of pure contrariness 
are cases of alternative bonds, where with one situation ele- 
ment two or more bonds are formed, leading to different 
responses. Thus, if ten different nonsense series, each be- 
ginning with f wef kob,' are learned, the 'wef kob' may not call 
up any one of them as well as it would have done, had only 
that one been learned. Thus, having sorted objects into piles 
by color may make one have a lower score in sorting them by 
size than one would otherwise have had. 

It must be remembered that in such cases the alternative 
bonds are never from exactly the same total compound of 
situation outside and condition inside the man. There is 
always some difference, though it may be an unnoticed feature 
of the man's attitude or 'set,' between the total states of 
affairs leading to the two responses. This fact gives the 
principle of explanation for the disputes concerning whether 
such alternative bonds do or do not inhibit one another. So 
long as the bonds are attached undiscriminatingly to the 
situation's gross features, they do inhibit each other; but it 
is possible to have an arrangement for switching accurately 

gray object, 'It is black; It is not black' would certainly not be left in 
the same condition thereby as if he had said nothing at all ; nor would 
he have the same effect on his hearers as if he had said nothing at all. 



266 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

from one set of bonds to another, according to some minor 
differences in the external situation or learner's set of mind, 
so that there is no inhibition, but even, perhaps, facilitation. 

For example, if the bonds are 'wef kob of the 12 syllable 
series I learned Saturday' ->- jur, bim, etc., and 'wef kob' of 
the 16 syllable series I learned yesterday' -)^ ziz, nok, etc., 
the bonds may do each other no harm, the 'of the 12 syllable 
series I learned Saturday' firmly excluding any bonds with 
'of the 16 syllable series, etc' from influence. So a person 
trained to .sort objects by color or by size may come to be able 
to sort them ten times by color and then change over to size 
without a tenth of a second of reduction in his speed, at the 
mere signal 'Size now' or the like. 

In the case of alternative systems of bonds there is then 
often an inhibition for a time, reducing to zero as the two 
systems of bonds get organized in connection with two 
systems of mental sets or attitudes, and perhaps giving way 
to facilitation by reason of certain serviceable identities in the 
bonds. 

So a man trained for an hour on a typewriter of standard 
keyboard might, after a second hour of practice, with the 
keys being changed about to the order 

a b c d e f g 

h i j k 1 m n 

o p q r s t u 

v w x y z, 

do worse than at the beginning; but if he practiced an hour 
daily on each sort of machine he would not fall back to his 
initial score for long, would soon come to be able to turn 
from one to the other system of bonds at the mere sight of 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 2,6j 

the machine, and would probably find that 20 hours of the 
two alternative systems gave greater ability at either than 
ten hours of practice at it alone would have given. 

The mass results of the similar and opposite changes in 
a certain group of bonds (call it group B) which have been 
brought about by the strengthening and weakening of bonds 
in a certain other group (call it group A), appear in the 
improvement or deterioration in one function (B) which is 
due to the improvement of another function (A). 

These mass results may be measured without knowledge 
of the particular facilitations and inhibitions of single bonds 
to which they are ultimately due. We may, that is, find out 
how far improvement in, say, checking o's, gives added ability 
in checking the A's on certain printed pages, without any 
ultimate analysis of the functions into their constituent bonds 
or demonstration of the relations of similar and opposite 
change that obtain between them. We thus secure a basis 
of knowledge for educational theories of the general or dis- 
ciplinary value of specific practice of various sorts. Many 
such mass results have been obtained in the last dozen years, 
and with important consequences to educational theory. With 
some of their consequences the rest of this chapter will be 
concerned. 

CHANGES IN EXPECTATION OF MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

One of the quarrels of the educational theorists concerns 
the extent to which special forms of training improve the 
general capacities of the mind. Does the study of Latin or 
of mathematics improve one's general reasoning powers? 
Does laboratory work in science train the power of observation 
for all sorts of facts? Does matching colored sticks educate 
the senses for all sorts of discriminations? 



268 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

The problem, which is clearly one of psychological fact, 
may be best stated in psychological terms as follows : How 
far does the training of any mental function improve other 
mental functions? In less technical phrase, How far does an 
ability, say to reason, acquired with data A, extend also to 
data B, C, D, etc. ? 

No one can doubt that all of the ordinary forms of home 
or school training have some influence upon mental traits in 
addition to the specific changes which they make in the parti- 
cular function the improvement of which is their direct object. 
On the other hand, no careful observer would assert that the 
influence upon the other mental traits is comparable in amount 
to that upon the direct object of training. By doubling a 
boy's reasoning power in arithmetical problems we do not 
double it for formal grammar or chess or economic history 
or theories of evolution. By tripling the accuracy of move- 
ment in fingering exercises we do not triple it for typewriting, 
playing billiards or painting. The gain of courage in the 
game of football is never equaled by the gain in moral courage 
or resistance to intellectual obstacles. The real question is 
not, 'Does improvement of one function alter others?' but, 
'To what extent, and how, does it?' 

The answer which I shall try to defend is that a change 
in one function alters any other only in so far as the two 
functions have as factors identical elements. The change in 
the second function is in amount that due to the change in 
the elements common to it and the first. The change is 
simply the necessary result upon the second function of the 
alteration of those of its factors which were elements of the 
first function, and so were altered by its training. To take 
a concrete example, improvement in addition will alter one's 
ability in multiplication because addition is absolutely identical 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 269 

with a part of multiplication and because certain other pro- 
cesses, — e. g., eye movements and the inhibition of all save 
arithmetical impulses, — are in part common to the two 
functions. 

Chief amongst such identical elements of practical im- 
portance in education are associations including ideas about 
aims and ideas of method and general principles, and 
associations involving elementary facts of experience such as 
length, color, number, which are repeated again and again in 
differing combinations. 

By identical elements are meant mental processes which 
have the same cell action in the brain as their physical correlate. 
It is of course often not possible to tell just what features of 
two mental abilities are thus identical. 

Until very recently books on education answered our ques- 
tions in a manner very different from this. They extended 
the influence of any special form of discipline much farther, 
and described its manner of operation only by vague and, I 
think, meaningless phrases. 

In place of any descriptive account I shall give a number 
of quotations picked fifteen years ago almost at random from 
all the statements about the influence of special training on 
general ability made in some fifty books on education. 

Since the mind is a unit and the faculties are simply phases 
or manifestations of its activity, whatever strengthens one 
faculty indirectly strengthens all the others. The verbal 
memory seems to be an exception to this statement, however, 
for it may be abnormally cultivated without involving to any 
profitable extent the other faculties. But only things that 
are rightly perceived and rightly understood can be rightly 
remembered. Hence whatever develops the acquisitive and 
assimilative powers will also strengthen memory; and, con- 



?JO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

versely, rightly strengthening- the memory necessitates the 
developing and training of the other powers. [R. N. Roark, 
'Method in Education/ p. 27] 

It is as a means of training the faculties of perception and 
generalization that the study of such a language as Latin 
:n comparison with English is so valuable. [C. L. Morgan, 
'Psychology for Teachers,' p. 186] 

Arithmetic, if judiciously taught, forms in the pupil habits 
of mental attention, argumentative sequence, absolute accuracy, 
and satisfaction in truth as a result, that do not seem to 
spring equally from the study of any other subject suitable 
to this elementary stage of instruction. [Joseph Payne, 
'Lectures on Education,' Vol. I., p. 260] 

By means of experimental and observational work in 
science, not only will his attention be excited, the power of 
observation, previously awakened, much strengthened, and the 
senses exercised and disciplined, but the very important habit 
of doing homage to the authority of facts rather than to the 
authority of men, be initiated. [Ibid., p. 261] 

The study of the Latin language itself does eminently 
discipline the faculties and secure to a greater degree than 
that of the othsr subjects we have discussed, the formation and 
growth of those mental qualities which are the best prepara- 
tives for the business of life— whether that business is to 
consist in making fresh mental acquisitions or in directing the 
powers thus strengthened and matured, to professional or other 
pursuits. [Ibid., p. 264] 

Let us now examine in detail the advantages which a 
person who has taken the ordinary Bachelor's degree has de- 
rived from the study of classics. Aside from the discipline of 
the will, which comes from any hard work, we find the fol- 
lowing: (1) His memory for facts has been strengthened 
by committing paradigms and learning a new vocabulary. 
(2) He has been obliged to formulate pretty distinctly a 
regular system of classified facts— the facts which form the 
material of the grammar— classified in due form under 
chapter, section, subsection and so on. This means that he 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 2JI 

has learned to remember things by their relations — a power 
which can hardly be acquired without practice in forming 
or using such classified systems. (3) He has had his judg- 
ment broadened and strengthened by constant calls upon it 
to account for things which cannot be accounted for without 
its exercise. [E. H. Babbitt, on p. 126 of 'Methods of Teach- 
ing the Modern Languages'] 

The value of the study of German 'lies in the scientific 
study of the language itself, in the consequent training of 
the reason, of the powers of observation, comparison and 
synthesis; in short, in the upbuilding and strengthening of 
the scientific intellect/ [Calvin Thomas, 'Methods of Teach- 
ing Modern Languages,' p. 27] 

[Advantages resulting from the teaching of drawing.] 
The visual, mental and manual powers are cultivated in com- 
bination, the eye being trained to see clearly and judge 
accurately, the mind to think, and the hand to record the 
appearance of the object seen, or the conceptions formed in 
the mind. Facility and skill in handicraft, and delicacy of 
manipulation, all depend largely upon the extent to which 
this hand and eye training has been fostered. The inventive 
and imaginative faculties are stimulated and exercised in 
design, and the graphic memory is strengthened by practice 
in memory drawing. The aesthetic judgment is brought into 
use, the power of discerning beauty, congruity, proportion, 
symmetry, is made stronger; and the love of the beautiful, 
inherent more or less in mankind, is greatly increased. [J. 
H. Morris, 'Teaching and Organization' (edited by P. A. 
Barnett), pp. 63-64] 

We may conclude this list by quotations from a recent 
inaugural address at a great American college and from the 
reasons given by a number of presidents of colleges to the 
question, 'Why go to college?' 

"We speak of the 'disciplinary' studies, . . . having in 
our thought the mathematics of arithmetic, elementary algebra 
and geometry, the Greek-Latin texts and grammars, the ele- 



272 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

ments of English and of French or German. . . . The mind 
takes fiber, facility, strength, adaptability, certainty of touch 
from handling them, when the teacher knows his art and 
their power. The college . . . should give . . . elasticity of 
faculty and breadth of vision, so that they shall have a surplus 
of mind to expend. . . ." [Woodrow Wilson, Science, 
November 7, 1902] 

Nathaniel Butler, President of Colby College: "It has 
been well said that an educated man has a sharp ax in his 
hand and an uneducated man a dull one. I should say that 
the purpose of a college education is to sharpen the ax to 
its keenest edge." 

H. M. MacCracken, Chancellor of New York University : 
"He will possess a better disciplined mind fof whatever work 
of life he may turn his attention to." 

Timothy D wight, late President of Yale University : "Such 
an education is the best means of developing thought power 
in a young man, and making him a thinking man of cultured 
mind." 



It is clear that the common view was that the words accu- 
racy, quickness, discrimination, memory, observation, attention, 
concentration, judgment, reasoning, etc., stand for some real 
and elemental abilities which are the same no matter what 
material they work upon; that these elemental abilities are 
altered by special disciplines to a large extent ; that they retain 
those alterations when turned to other field; that thus in a 
more or less mysterious way learning to do one thing well will 
make one do better things that in concrete appearance have 
absolutely no community with it. 

The mind was regarded as a machine of which the different 
faculties are parts. Experiences being* thrown in at one end, 
perception perceives them, discrimination tells them apart, 
memory retains them, and so on. By training, the machine is 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 273 

made to work more quickly, efficiently and economically with 
all sorts of experiences. Or, in a still cruder type of thinking, 
the mind was a storage battery which could be loaded with will 
power or intellect or judgment, giving the individual 'a surplus 
of mind to expend.' General names for a host of individual 
processes — such as judgment, precision, concentration — were 
falsely taken to refer to pieces of mental machinery which one 
could once for all get into working order, or, still worse, to 
amounts of something which could be stored up in banks to be 
drawn on at leisure. 

Such quotations would today entirely misrepresent the 
standard view. When the three papers by Woodworth and 
Thorndike appeared in 1901, describing the limited extent to 
which practice in sensory discrimination, the observation of 
small details, and the like, spread beyond the specific abilities 
trained, they aroused surprise and incredulity. At the present 
time, such a limited spread of training would be taken almost 
for granted. 

The notions of mental machinery which, being improved 
for one sort of data, held the improvement equally for all 
sorts; of magic powers which, being trained by exercise of 
one sort to a high efficiency, held that efficiency whatever they 
might be exercised upon; and of the mind as a reservoir for 
potential energy which could be filled by any one activity 
and drawn on for any other — have now disappeared from 
expert writings on psychology. 

The results of the many experiments wherein learners 
were tested in several functions, before and after a period of 
special practice with some one function, have proved them 
false. When allowance is made for the gain due to the prac- 
tice of the 'before and after' tests themselves, there remains 
18 



2?4 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

commonly only a moderate amount of 'transfer' due to the 
special training, even when the functions tested are very sim- 
ilar to those trained. As for general improvement in all mem- 
orizing from special training in learning poetry, general im- 
provemen f n keenness of observation of all sorts from special 
training in noticing colors in the kindergarten, shapes in a 
biological laboratory, or relations in Latin syntax, the per- 
centage of the improvement that is 'trans f erred' is very, very 
slight. In general, the experiments have shown that, in the 
words of two of the earlier workers in this field, 

"Improvement in any single mental function need not 
improve the ability in functions commonly called by the same 
name. It may injure it. 

"Improvement in any single mental function rarely brings 
about equal improvement in any other function, no matter how 
similar, for the working of every mental function-group is 
conditioned by the nature of the data in each particular case. 

"The very slight amount of variation in the nature of the 
data necessary to affect the efficiency of a function-group makes 
it fair to infer that no change in the data, however slight, is 
without effect on the function. The loss in the efficiency of 
a function trained with certain data, as we pass to data more 
and more unlike the first, makes it fair to infer that there is 
always a point where* the loss is complete, a point beyond 
which the influence of the training has not extended. The 
rapidity of this loss, that is, its amount in the case of data 
very similar to the data on which the function was trained, 
makes it fair to infer that this point is nearer than has been 
supposed. 

"The general consideration of the cases of retention or 
of loss of practice effect seems to make it likely that spread 
of practice occurs only where identical elements are concerned 
in the influencing and influenced functions." 

The experimental results, indeed, have tempted certain 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 275 

writers to proceed too far toward the absurd conclusion that 
all practice is utterly specific in its effects — confined absolutely 
to just the particular situations that were met in the special 
training and just the particular habits that were formed. 

The average opinion of competent psychologists at the 
present time is represented fairly by the following quotations : 

"In any event it is desirable that the teacher should rid him- 
self of the notion that 'thinking* is a simple unalterable 
faculty; that he should recognize that it is a term denoting 
the various ways in which things acquire significance. It 
is desirable to expel also the kindred notion that some sub- 
jects are inherently 'intellectual/ and hence possessed of an 
almost magical power to train the faculty of thought. Think- 
ing is specific in that different things suggest their own 
appropriate meanings, tell their own unique stories, and in 
that they do this in very different ways with different persons. 
As the growth of the body is through the assimilation of 
food, so the growth of mind is through the local organization 
of subject-matter. Thinking is not like a sausage machine 
which reduces all materials indifferently to one marketable 
commodity, but it is a power of following up and linking 
together the specific suggestions that specific things arouse." 
[Dewey, '10, p. 38 f.] 

"Three points will show the possibilities of benefit from 
special training beyond the specific line of reaction subjected 
to practice. 1. The habit pathways may altogether or in part 
be common to two or to many operations perhaps externally 
very different ... 2. The method of procedure in a special 
habit may evidently be applicable to a much larger field . . . 
3. Mental attitudes or ideals tend by chance variation and by 
suggestion to extend their sphere of action." [Rowe, '09, 
pp. 243-246, passim] 

"Knowledge and training are not merely specific in their 
application, but they also have a general value. Their value 
arises through the factor of identical elements, of which there 
are at least three types [aim, method and content], and it 



276 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

declines rapidly as the similarity of the material of instruction 
of training decreases." [Ruediger, '10, p. 116] 

"Now no small part of the discipline which comes from 
the effortful use of attention in any direction or on any topic 
is to be found in the habituation which is afforded in 
neglecting or otherwise suppressing unpleasant or distracting 
sensations. We learn to 'stand it' in short. . . . The actual 
mental mechanism by which this intellectual and moral ac- 
climatization is secured, is extremely interesting but we can- 
not pause to discuss it. Certain it is that something of the 
sort occurs and that it is an acquirement which may pre- 
sumably be carried over from one type of occupation to 
another. If each form of effortful attention had a wholly 
unique type of discomfort attached to it, this inference might 
be challenged. But such does not seem to be the case." 
[Angell, '08, p. 9 f.] 

"Transfer of training is then possible in the ways indi- 
cated : ( 1 ) Where a single element to which a specific response 
is made functions under various environmental conditions 
because it is a common element in these various, and other- 
wise to a greater or less degree, dissimilar environments; 
(2) When a dominant mood or emotion so colors various 
environments that a characteristic response is obtained with- 
out identity of any one objective condition; (3) Where a 
single response in reality involves other and more general 
adjustments; (4) It is also possible, as Bagley suggests, 
through making the end of the activity a clearly conscious 
ideal. In this case the transfer takes place by a direct carry- 
ing over by consciousness not of the activity itself, but of 
the purpose of the activity, to another field." [Colvin, '09, 
edition of '10, p. 30 f.] 

"One mental function or activity improves others in so 
far as and because they are in part identical with it, because 
it contains elements common to them. Addition improves 
multiplication because multiplication is largely addition; 
knowledge of Latin gives increased ability to learn French 
because many of the facts learned in the one case are needed 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 277 

in the other. The study of geometry may lead a pupil to 
be more logical in all respects, for one element of being logical 
in all respects is to realize that facts can be absolutely proven 
and to admire and desire this certain and unquestionable sort 
of demonstration. . . . 

"These identical elements may be in the stuff, the data 
concerned in the training, or in the attitude, the method taken 
with it. The former kind may be called identities of sub- 
stance and the latter, identities of procedure. 

"Identity of Substance. — Thus special training in the 
ability to handle numbers gives an ability useful in many acts 
of life outside of school classes because of identity of sub- 
stance, because of the fact that the stuff of the world is so 
often to be numbered and counted. The data of the scientist, 
the grocer, the carpenter and the cook are in important features 
the same as the data of the arithmetic class. So also the ability 
to speak and write well in classroom exercises in English 
influences life widely because home life, business and pro- 
fessional work are all in part talking and writing. . . . 

"Identity of Procedure. — The habit acquired in a labora- 
tory course of looking to see how chemicals do behave, instead 
of guessing at the matter or learning statements about it 
out of a book, may make a girl's methods of cooking or a 
boy's methods of manufacturing more scientific because the 
attitude of distrust of opinion and search for facts may so 
possess one as to be carried over from the narrower to the 
wider field. Difficulties in studies may prepare students for 
the difficulties of the world as a whole by cultivating the 
attitudes of neglect or discomfort, ideals of accomplishing 
what one sets out to do, and the feeling of dissatisfaction 
with failure." [Thorndike, '06, pp. 243-245, passim] 

"Mental discipline is the most important thing in edu- 
cation, but it is specific, not general. The ability developed 
by means of one subject can be transferred to another subject 
only in so far as the latter has elements in common with the 
former. Abilities should be developed in school only by 
means of those elements of subject-matter and of method that 



27^ THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

are common to the most valuable phases of the outside en- 
vironment. In the high school there should also be an effort 
to work out general concepts of method from the specific 
methods used." [Heck, '09, Edition of 'n, p. 198] 

". . . No study should have a place in the curriculum for 
which this general disciplinary characteristic is the chief 
recommendation. Such advantage can probably be gotten 
in some degree from every study, and the intrinsic values of 
each study afford at present a far safer criterion of edu- 
cational work than any which we can derive from the theory 
of formal discipline." [Angell, '08, p. 14] 

THE GENERAL RATIONALE OF MENTAL DISCIPLINE 

There are three facts of behavior knowledge of which 
will in a vague way protect one from expecting too much, 
and from not expecting enough, general influence from special 
training. First, learning is essentially the modification of 
connections between actual situations and the responses of the 
individual to them. Any assumption of gain in concentration, 
will-power, imaginativeness, appreciation, conscience, reason- 
ing, or the like which cannot be described as a set of changes 
in the bonds between specified situations and definable re- 
sponses, is extremely risky, and probably depends upon 
the magic efficacy of mythical powers. Second, although 
every change must be in a specified bond, and though, as a rule, 
these bonds are between concrete, particular responses, 
some of these particularized bonds are of very widespread 
value. Third, there are bonds involving situations and ele- 
ments of situations which are, in the ordinary sense of the 
word, general. 

The first of these cautions has been reiterated so often 
in this volume that no more need be said of it save that nine- 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 2J<) 

tenths of the mischief done in education by the older doctrines 
of mental discipline was due to the failure to describe behavior 
in terms of its actual elements. 

The second fact accounts for a large fraction of the 
influence which training in one exercise, study or occupation 
has upon the efficiency of others. Useful connections with 
two, three, four, red, white, green, long, short, square-yard, 
square-foot, in this or that particular context, are of more or 
less general usefulness, since they may serve as well when 
the two, red, square, and the like are met in very different 
contexts. The ability to draw a straight four-inch line, to 
pronounce the vernacular, or to 'carry' in addition, in what- 
ever particular circumstances gained, may be widely used. 
Of special importance are the connections of neglect. Such 
bonds as 'Stimuli to hunger save at meal times — neglect them/ 
'Sounds of boys at play save at playtime' — 'neglect them/ 
'Ideas of lying down and closing one's eyes save at bed time, — 
neglect them' and the like are the main elements of real fact 
meant by 'power of attention,' or 'concentration' or 'strength 
of will.' In so far as a certain situation is bound to the 
response of neglect, it is prevented from distracting one in 
general. Of special importance also are those particular bonds 
which represent notions, maxims, methods, ideals, responses 
to abstract clues, and the like. Form the connections — 'A 
disagreeable thing that needs to be done — / must do it;' 
'The thought 'I must do X' — enduring the discomfort till 
X is done;' 'The essential thing in scientific work — verifi- 
cation;' 'Anything that happens — has a discoverable cause' 
and the like and they may turn up again and again to impel 
and restrain one to whom they are living creeds. Of special 
importance too, as just hinted, are the connections where satis- 
faction and discomfort are the responses. To be satisfied 



280 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

only when a fact to be described has been measured objec- 
tively is an identical element in very many lines of scientific 
work. To be annoyed by vagueness, untested opinions, futility 
and failure is a prime aid toward clearness, thought and 
achievement. 

A particular bond may be with even a very abstract or 
subtle element of situations. In so far as many situations 
of things or thoughts have some common element or feature 
which classes them as beautiful, ugly, true, false, desirable, 
undesirable, important, trivial, and the like, and in so far 
as appropriate connections are made between the element in 
question and some response such as attention, neglect, enjoy- 
ment, discomfort, special training with these elements in 
one field may spread to many fields. How far beauty, de- 
sirability, triviality, and the like can thus acquire responses 
to them regardless of their concomitants in the way that 
a mile, redness or sixness do, is a question. They surely 
do so less often and less fully. The amount of training re- 
quired to make a man respond by esteem to 'truth, wherever 
and however present,' would be far greater than that which 
would suffice to teach him to respond in some one way to 
'six pounds, wherever present/ Even the latter achievement 
is very rare. Ordinary training would not fit one to respond 
properly to the 'sixpoundness' of a certain volume of air 
here, or of a large block of lead on the moon. And perhaps 
no man could be secured against such mis-response to truth 
of some sort, until he had been specially trained to respond 
to hundreds of sorts. Still, the possibility remains of more or 
less general utility from particular responses to very abstract 
and subtle features of things and thoughts. 

The third caution — that there are bonds involving situ- 
ations and elements of situations which are, in the ordinary 



THE SPREAD OF IMPROVEMENT 281 

sense of the word, general — rests ultimately upon the second. 
Ultimately every connection is between some one state of 
affairs and some one response. But such elements of 
situations as 'being alive and awake,' 'being aware that one 
has a problem,' 'feeling that one has done, or has not done, 
one's best,' and the like, are general in the sense of occurring 
again and again in connection with almost anything else. 
And to them responses do get bound. To take the extreme 
case, each man has tendencies to respond to 'merely being 
alive and awake' which cooperate with all his more specific 
tendencies. 

The notion that over and above the habits and powers 
which he displays in his life as wage-earner, citizen, friend, 
and member of a family, a man has certain tendencies to 
respond to anything — certain diffuse fear or courage, integrity 
or shiftiness, and seriousness or flippancy, for instance, — is 
commonly much overworked, but has always a core of truth. 
His past life provides every man with a set of attitudes or 
mental 'sets' in response to the mere fact that a statement is 
made regardless of what the statement is, to the mere asking 
of any question, to the mere presence of a conflict of interests, 
regardless of what or whose the interests are, to the mere fact 
of being alive, awake and well, with no immediate engage- 
ment. Special training can increase for any man the chance 
that his attitude will be to think over the statement, to seek 
to settle the question, to be satisfied by justice in the case 
of the conflict, to look about for something interesting to 
do in the leisure time. 

These general tendencies may be outweighed by stronger 
bonds formed with other features of a situation. The 
generally thoughtful man may greedily believe a statement 
about his son that tickles his paternal pride ; the generally just 



282 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

man may prefer a conventional to an equitable solution of a 
conflict between the sexes. They may be outweighed ; but they 
exist and cast their weight in turn to decide the balance against 
certain thoughts and acts. 

As a result of all these cautions the advisable course 
in estimating beforehand the disciplinary effect of any study, 
occupation or the like would seem to be to list as accurately 
as possible the particular situation-response connections 
made therein, noting especially what the study makes one 
neglect, be annoyed by, and be satisfied by; what connections 
it forms that carry vital maxims, notions of method, ideals 
of accuracy, persistence, verification, openmindedness and the 
like; and what responses it favors toward the commonest ele- 
ments of intellectual and moral life such as 'a statement' or 
f a question.' Prophecy beforehand should in all cases be 
replaced as fast as may be by measurements of the actual 
changes made by the 'study' in question. 

Finally, it must be remembered that a very small spread 
of training may be of very great educational value if it 
extends over a wide enough field. If a hundred hours of 
training in being scientific about chemistry produced only 
one hundredth as much improvement in being scientific about 
all sorts of facts, it would yet be a very remunerative edu- 
cational force. If a gain of fifty percent in justice toward 
classmates in school affairs increased the general equitable- 
ness of a boy's behavior only one-tenth of one percent, this 
disciplinary effect would still perhaps be worth more than 
the specific habits. 



chapter xix 

Mental Fatigue 

The topic of this and the next following ;hapter is the 
temporary deterioration of mental functions due to exercise 
without rest — its amount, rate and changes in rate, the factors 
constituting it, the conditions by which it is influenced, and 
the effect of such deterioration in one function upon the 
efficiency of others. 

THE DECREASE IN EFFICIENCY OF A SINGLE FUNCTION UNDER 
CONTINUOUS EXERCISE 

The term efficiency is used here to refer to the quantity 
and quality of the product produced. If the quantity per unit 
of time remains constant, decrease in efficiency is measured 
by the decrease in quality; with quality constant, by the 
decrease in quantity; with both varying, by some composite 
of the two changes. 

The term single function is used in antithesis to 'the 
mind as a whole,' not to mean a function devoid of com- 
poundness or complexity. I mean by it such functions as 
adding a column of figures, reacting to a signal by a movement 
as quickly as possible, the signal and movement being the same 
throughout, judging which of two weights (all close to ioo 
grams) is heavier, memorizing the English equivalents of Ger- 
man words, or multiplying a three-place number by a three- 

283 



284 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

place number, nothing being allowed to be written or spoken 
save the two numbers themselves. Each of these functions 
comprises different elements, not all of which are at work all 
the time. Exercise is continuous only in the sense that the 
subject does his best to make it so. 

As the sample for intensive study, I choose an experiment 
of Arai ['12], which has the special merit of measuring 
the effect of continuous exercise of a very difficult intellectual 
process, as free as possible from sensory or muscular work, 
at a stage when it was almost free from improvement by 
practice, over a very long period, and on four different oc- 
casions. Miss Arai says : 

"The first experiment was made during February and 
March, 1909, at Teachers College, Columbia University. The 
purpose of the experiment was to ascertain : ( 1 ) the amount, 
rate ana the change of the rate of fatigue in the special mental 
function exercised, and (2) the amount of fatigue transferred 
to certain other functions. 

"The particular function tested was that exercised in 
mental multiplication of pairs of numbers like 

2645 8324 7954 5438 

5784 7384 3528 and 2347 



"About one thousand different combinations of figures 
were used. The order of the examples being made by chance, 
the distribution of difficult and easy examples is random. 
The subject of the experiment was the writer herself. . . . 
On February 2nd, the subject made the first test in the fol- 
lowing manner. Using an ordinary watch the subject set 
a time for starting. When the hand of the watch reached 
the point set, the subject looked at the first example and 
multiplied mentally but with the original numbers in sight. 
The answer was written down as soon as it was obtained and 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 285 

the time recorded. Then the subject immediately took up 
the second example and repeated the same procedure. Thus 
she worked from 9:30 a. m. to 3:18 p. m. with a rest of 
forty-eight minutes for luncheon, and obtained the answers 
of twenty-four examples." ['12, p. 31 f.] 

On February 4, twenty-six such examples were done in 
the same manner; on February 7, twelve; on February 15, 
thirty; and on February 22, sixty. From the seven hours 
continuous work of February 22, it was clear that the subject 
could not, by even this long period of work, be brought to 
a condition of inability to do the work. The work was con- 
sequently made still more difficult, as follows : 

"Instead of multiplying with the original figures in sight, 
the subject relied on memory for the figures and multiplied 
them mentally with closed eyes. The method was better than 
the earlier one, for it not only made the task more difficult, 
but it helped to eliminate sensory fatigue. When the subject 
forgot the original figures, she looked at them again, but 
as the time was made longer on this account, the loss of the 
original figures was counted against her. But this seldom 
occurred as the subject was careful to commit the numbers to 
memory." [Arai, '12, p. 35] 

Her work, that is, was to look at an example such as 
gg. cover it, memorize the two numbers, then multiply 
mentally 4 X 4962, getting 19848, then memorize this, but 
keeping in mind the 4962 and the 758 to be used later, then 
to multiply mentally 4962 by 8 getting 39696 and perform 
mentally the operation of adding * g f Q f o . 

Having obtained the 416808,* she could now forget the 
19848, but must not have let slip the 4962 and 75 and must 

* Other methods of operation are, of course, possible, but this ws.s 
the one which she used throughout the experiment. 



286 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

remember the 416808. She then multiplied 4962 by 5, and 
remembered to count the 24810 as 2481000 in adding it 
to 416808. Having obtained 2897808, she could now forget 
all but it and the 4962 and 7 and the fact that the 7 counted 
as 7000 in multiplying. Multiplying mentally and obtaining 
34734, she held it in mind and added 34734000 to 2897808, 
and could then write down the answer 37,631,808, look at 
her watch, record the time, look at the next example on the 
sheet, say f 2 f, and proceed as above. 

If the reader will try this work with the far easier task 
of multiplying four-place by three-place numbers for even 
only an hour or two he will appreciate that it is far more 
difficult and fatiguing (in the popular sense of requiring much 
disagreeable effort) than all but a few of life's customary 
intellectual labors. 

After doing 189 examples requiring about thirty-five hours 
(during the week February 24-March 2) by this new method, 
the subject reached a point where practice effect was very 
slight, and secured in the next four days the record to be 
considered here. 

"On March 3, 4, 5 and 6, the subject did the mental 
multiplication from 11 A. M. to 11 P. M. without any pauses 
except the two or three seconds between the examples for 
recording time. But the subject had taken a heavier break- 
fast than usual at 10 A. M. and a light supper after 11 P. M. 
Her health was in good condition and she slept soundly at 
night. The contents of her consciousness during the experi- 
ments were very simple, all desires being completely subjected 
to the one desire to get true fatigue curves." [Arai, '12, p. 
37] The results of these experiments are summarized in 
Table 4 and Fig. 60. 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 




288 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

The base line of Fig. 60 is scaled for the number of 
examples done, one inch equalling forty examples, each 12 
hours of rest being denoted by a quarter-inch vertical line at 
the appropriate point on the base-line. 

Above each tenth of an inch along the base line a horizontal 
line is drawn whose height in each case denotes the time 
required for the four examples in question, plus an addition 
for each wrong figure more than two in any answer, and a 
subtraction for each wrong figure less than two in any answer, 
of three per cent of the time required for the four examples 
(that is, twelve per cent of the time required per example). 

Table 4. 

Fatigue in the Case of Mental Multiplication with Four-Place 
Numbers. After Arai, '12, p. 38 f. 

Time required (in minutes), with allowances for errors, for successive 
sets of four examples multiplied mentally. 



Set 


Mar. 3 


Mar. 4 


Mar. 9 


Mar. 6 


Average 


1 


23.6 


20.7 


19.3 


16.5 


20.0 


2 


23-3 


24-5 


16.5 


29.6 


23-9 


3 


23.2 


23.5 


20.9 


28.5 


234 


4 


26.1 


25.9 


22.8 


23.O 


24.6 


5 


25.8 


27.8 


28.3 


20.2 


26.8 


6 


27-3 


31-4 


31.7 


26.2 


294 


7 


34-3 


37-3 


24.O 


33-6 


340 


3 


3i-3 


249 


27-5 


33-8 


294 


9 


40.0 


35-0 


17.1 


26.7 


30.9 


10 


49-8 


41.5 


31.0 


38.6 


40.O 


11 


52.2 


45-8 


39-1 


35-6 


42.5 


12 


43-8 


44.6 


48.1 


34-1 


44.2 


13 


37-9 


41.8 


41.0 


47.O 


41.4 


14 


42.5 


46.5 


27.9 


29.8 


36.2 


15 


397 


31.1 


28.3 


47.1 


36.6 


16 


39.0 


52.O 


50.0 


45-6 


4O.7 


17* 


62.1 


444 


49-1 


32.9 


47-1 


Firsl 


eight 46.9 


45-2 


35.8 


46.I 


43-9 


Last 


eight 101.1 


96.4 


99.1 


7&5 


93-8 



♦There were only three examples in the 17th set. The score was 
adjusted to be what it would have beep for four examples done at the 
same speed and accuracy. 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 289 

The Amount of Fatigue 

The amount of fatigue is measurable by the increase in 
time required* as work continues, an allowance being made 
for practice, or by the increase of time required at the end 
of work over that required at the beginning of work after full 
rest. By either method we find that somewhat more than 
double time was required as a result of the long work without 
rest. 

This, it must be remembered, by no means implies that 
the function was less than half as efficient at the end of the 
twelve hours of work as at the end of twelve hours of rest. 
On the contrary, the amount of percentile loss in absolute 
efficiency was probably very slight. For a person to be able 
to multiply a number like 9263 by one like 5748 without any 
visual, written, or spoken aids, even in fifteen, or for that 
matter in a hundred and fifty, minutes, implies a very high 
degree of efficiency. That a person can exert himself to the 
utmost at this very difficult work for ten or twelve hours 
without rest and still be able to do it, even if at the expense 
of twice or thrice as many minutes per example as at the 
beginning, means that the loss in efficiency by any absolute 
standard has been small. For Shakespeare to have required 
twice as long to write Hamlet as he actually did require 
would not have meant a loss of half the efficiency of the 
play-writing function! For Napoleon to have taken twenty 
instead of five minutes to plan a series of moves at Austerlitz 
would not have meant that his generalship was only one 
fourth as efficient r 

* Here and throughout the discussion of Miss Arai's experiment 'time 
required' means 'time required for work of equal accuracy/ 

is 



290 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

The zero point of efficiency in the function of mental 
multiplication would be 'just not to multiply a number like 
3 by a number like 2 in, say, ten minutes. ' We do not of 
course know just at what point between this zero and the 
ability to multiply a four-place by a four-place number men- 
tally in five minutes with only two figures in the answer 
wrong (as Miss Arai did at the beginning of work), we 
should place her ability, at the end of work, to multiply a 
four-place by a four-place number in eleven minutes. The 
reader may judge for himself. It is my impression that she 
could, at the end of work, certainly have multiplied a three- 
place by a three-place number (and probably a four-place 
by a three-place number) as quickly and accurately as she 
had multiplied a four-place by a four-place number at the 
beginning, and that it would be absurd to place the efficiency 
of her last half hour's work in each period at less than 75 per 
cent of the initial efficiency. 

There are no other experiments with so long* continued and 
so difficult work. There have been, however, many investiga- 
tions of the effect of one or two hours of unremitting work at 
computation, memorizing, counting letters and the like. So, 
for example, Oehrn ['95] had ten individuals work each for 
two hours on each of six sorts of work. 

Oehrn's results show that, in general, whatever fatigue 
there may have been was so slight as to be counterbalanced 
by the gain from practice including the adaptation or 'warm- 
ing up' to the work. Fig. 61 shows the central tendency 
of the change in efficiency considering all six sorts of work 
together. In general that is, the subjects worked equally 
well throughout the entire two hours. This general result 
might have come from a steady improvement in some of 
the functions, balanced by a steady loss in efficiency in others,, 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 



29I 



or from various rates of change in efficiency in the different 
functions. As a matter of fact, however, as Fig. 62 shows, 
the different particular functions follow closely the general 
tendency. Their slight divergences therefrom are probably 
due to the small number of subjects and experiments. 



\ / \ /X 



Fig. 61. 



Fig. 62. 



The author ['12] found with five subjects who added 
columns, each of 10 one-place numbers, continuously for from 
one and a half to two hours per day, that the difference 
between the last ten minutes of one day's work and the first 
ten minutes of the work of the next day — that is, after the 
rest — was, for each individual in each pair of consecutive 
days, as shown in Table 5. The central tendency is toward 
a fatigue effect of 6% (i. e., to do 6% fewer examples in 



2Q2 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



the same time) from approximately ioo minutes of continuous 
exercise at adding. 

Table 5. Fatigue in Adding 
Time (corrected for errors) required to add x rows at the end of 
each work period and at the beginning of the following work period. 
x ~ 6 for D, 2 for L, 4 for Mc, 3 for R and 6 for S. Also the per cent 
which the latter is of the former in each case. 







i-a 




^ 


*otr 


G-* 








<v> 




TJ O 


MOW 


•0.2 


M O K3 


•o.S 


M O -^ 








> 




<3 


«51 


C 1- 


PQ^.O 






\ 


\ 

CO 


M 
\ 


< 
\ 

> 




si 




8 £ 






"S'e 








< 


D 


715 


565 


595 


620 


615 


580 


79 


104 


94 


92 


L 


975 


615 


590 


560 


545 


585 


63 


95 


107 


88 


Mc 


543 


531 


579 


510 


5ii 


466 


98 


88 


9i 


92 


R 


630 


545 


615 


545 


535 


495 


87 


88 


93 


89 


S 


897 


850 


842 


934 


779 


743 


95 


in 


95 


100 



Average of all per cents = 93. Median of all per cents = 94 

The results quoted give a fair sampling of the amounts 
of difference found between the efficiency of a function after 
long exercise of it at the individual's supposed maximum 
exertion, and its efficiency after full rest. These differences 
are in general very slight. A man can work for several hours 
at his utmost, and at the end do nearly as well as he will 
after full rest. Except when the function exercised is very 
disagreeable, either in toto or in the degree of restraint which 
it demands, the loss during the v/ork period is often indis- 
cernible. Indeed there is usually a gross gain, though after 
full rest there is a further gain. Such statements as Binet's 
"Tout effort est accompagne d'une certaine fatigue" ['98, 
p. 302], give then a wrong impression of the amount and rate 
of fatigue. 

Such statements have been common partly because those 
who have written about fatigue at all have usually been inter- 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 293 

ested in it and ready to believe in its existence and magnify 
its amount, partly because the gross results found for fatigue 
of a muscle have misled expectations in the case of mental 
fatigue, and partly because many students of this problem 
begged the question by presupposing that mental work done 
without rest must decrease the ability to do further work, 
and partly because of one particular fallacious supposition 
which requires brief comment here. 

I refer to the supposition that any decrease in the per- 
manent improvement (resulting from, say two hours of con- 
tinuous work) below the permanent improvement that would 
have been made if the two hours had been distributed in the 
best possible manner, is to be reckoned as fatigue. This argu- 
ment sounds innocent, but is essentially unsound. It confuses 
a temporary deficiency which rest can cure with a permanent 
deficiency which rest cannot cure, but which a better distri- 
bution of the practice periods could have prevented. 

Exercise of a function without rest shows two radically 
different effects. One is that the function is, at the end of 
the exercise, slightly less efficient than it becomes after a 
certain amount of rest. The other is that it is still less 
efficient than it would have become if the exercise had been 
distributed optimally so as to prevent over-learning, loss of 
satisfyingness, practice at less than maximal effort, and the 
like. The two effects should not be confused. 

The fallacy of arguing that long use causes a temporary 
deterioration because the permanent improvement is less with 
it than it would have been with the same time in short periods 
is much the same as in the argument that a man who had a 
thousand dollars at 10 A. M., January i, and the same amount 
at 10 P. M. of the same clay, must really have iost a fifth 
of it, since, had he speculated successfully with it on six 



294 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

or eight separate occasions during the day, he would have 
increased it to twelve hundred dollars. 

THE CURVE OF WORK 

Various notions have been entertained concerning changes 
in the rate of decrease in efficiency of a function in the course 
flf continuous exercise, — that is, changes in the slope of the 
curve of work. For instance, we have the doctrine that at 
the very beginning a person tends, other things being equal, 
to work at a higher efficiency than ever again. This we may 
call the doctrine of the Tnitial Spurt.' A second doctrine is 
that knowledge that the end is at hand produces in the last 
fraction of a work-period of limited length, other things 
being equal, a marked rise in efficiency. This we may call 
the doctrine of the 'End Spurt.' A third doctrine is that for 
the first half-hour or so, other things being equal, efficiency 
increases gradually. This we may call the doctrine of 'In- 
citement' or the 'Warming-Up' effect. A fourth doctrine 
is that a slower, longer and more lasting gain exists along- 
side of the 'Warming-Up' effect, called Adaptation. A fifth 
doctrine is that any more than usually rapid decrease in 
efficiency, by attracting the person's attention and rousing him 
to greater exertion, tends, other things being equal, to be 
followed by a relative increase in efficiency and maintenance 
of efficiency at a relatively high level for a few minutes. 
This we may call the doctrine of 'Spurt after Fatigue.' A 
sixth doctrine is that slight ups and downs in efficiency come 
rhythmically in correspondence with fluctuations of attention, 
each total 'wave' being about two seconds long. 

It should be noted that the terms Initial Spurt, End Spurt, 
'Spurt after Fatigue,' 'Spurt after Disturbance,' 'Warming- 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 295 

Up* (Anregung), 'Adaptation' (Gewohnung), 'Rhythm of 
Attention,' and the like, may each be used in two meanings. 
They may refer to objective changes in the efficiency of the 
function, — that is, in the height of the curve — or to imagined 
causes of such objective changes. Thus, End-Spurt may mean 
either 'an increase in efficiency in the last five or ten minutes 
of work,' or 'a reinforcing potency from knowledge that the 
end is near.' 'Adaptation' or Gewohnung may mean either 
'a rise in efficiency, slower than the rise called Warming- 
up and less permanent than the rise due to practice,' or some 
real factor which causes this rise and is different from the 
factors causing 'Warming-Up' or the practice effect. 

I shall in this chapter use these terms only in the former ob- 
jective meanings of changes in the efficiency of the function, 
asking, for instance, in the case of Initial Spurt, "To what 
extent is a high degree of efficiency appearing in the first few 
minutes of work characteristic of work curves in general, or 
of certain individuals in certain kinds of work?" 

Initial Spurt 

This phenomenon is certainly not characteristic of work 
curves in general. In the case of the 37 work-periods of 16 
subjects engaged in mental multiplication (of a three-place 
number by a three-place number) there was no evidence of 
it. In the case of five adults working at addition (each for 
four two-hour periods), there is no evidence of it. 

I am unable to find anywhere any evidence of consistent 
initial spurt with any individual in all mental functions or 
with all (or nearly all) individuals in any kind of mental 
work, much less with all individuals in all kinds of work. 
The work curves obtained by Oehrn, ['95] Amber g, ['95] 



20 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

Weygandt, ['97] Lindley, ['00] and other workers in 
Kraepelin's laboratory give no such evidence. Nor is it to 
be found in the data got by Yoakum, ['09] so far as he 
presents them. 

Lindley's work, which was the most extensive, showed as 
speed ratios for successive five-minute periods at the begin- 
ning of work, 100, 98, 97, 97, and 96, using the data from all 
three subjects. The first five minutes, that is, differed from 
the second substantially only as the fourth from the fifth. 
Putting together Weygandt's series I find ratios of 100, 97 
and 95^2 for the first three five-minute periods. Hoch and 
Kraepelin ['95, p. 431 ff.] showed, on the whole, ratios of 
100, 99, 98 and 94 for the first four five-minute periods. 
Miesemer ['02] showed ratios of 100, 96, 98, 97. In fact 
the very results of Rivers and Kraepelin, ['96] to explain 
which Initial Spurt was specially invoked, give as ratios (by 
five-minute periods) 100, 87, 99, 101, 102, 102. Clearly the 
fact in them to be explained is the 87 of the second five 
minutes rather than the 100 of the first five. 

It is, I admit, very likely that some individuals in some 
kinds of work tend to fall off rapidly from the too exacting 
standard which they set themselves at the beginning, just 
as some tend to rise rapidly above the standard which thev 
cautiously try at the beginning. But these idiosyncrasies must 
not be misinterpreted as a general law. 

End Spurt 

It is often the case in ordinary mental work with a time 
limit, that as one approaches the end of the work period, the 
knowledge that he is approaching it leads him to spurt. In 
ordinary mental work one does not work throughout at one's 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 297 

possible maximum, so that such a spurt is easily possible. In 
experimental work, when the subject is required to work 
throughout at maximum possible efficiency, such a spurt can 
come only if the subject has deliberately disregarded instruc- 
tions, or if the knowledge of the approaching end releases 
forces over which he had no control. The latter is apparently 
possible, various external stimuli, such as other competing 
individuals, applause and the like, being apparently able to 
add a reinforcement beyond what a subject's own deter- 
mination can summon. 

On the whole, no subject who has been tested four or 
more times shows consistently any great end-spurt; the 
general tendency is to a rise, in the last five or ten minutes, 
of three or four per cent in the amount of work per unit of 
time. 

Spurt after Fatigue and Spurt after Disturbance 

In mental work in ordinary life a person may obviously, 
if he is not doing his best, at any time do a little better to make 
up for an observed temporary deficiency, however caused. 
Deficiencies due to disturbances certainly, and to fatigue, if 
that acted unevenly throughout a work period, might be thus 
noticed and counterbalanced. In a subject who is keeping 
his efficiency at a maximum so far as he can control it, the 
observation of a fall in achievement might still so act as a 
reinforcement. 

It should be noted, however, that on general grounds the 
suggestion that one is doing well would seem more favorable 
to the efficiency of one already doing his best than the sugges- 
tion that he is doing badly, and that empirically no one has 
correlated the fluctuations in work curves with the incidence 



298 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

of disturbances of known character. The doctrine of spurt 
after fatigue and spurt after disturbance in the case of work 
done under the conditions of the ordinary fatigue experiment, 
is then at present a speculative hypothesis. It was devised 
apparently to explain the fluctuations in efficiency, from one 
minute or five-minute period to another, which are found in 
continuous adding, cancelling letters, memorizing, or other 
forms of mental work. 

A rise following a fall in the curve easily attracts obser- 
vation and tempts readily to theorizing. A rise followed by 
a rise, or a fall followed by a fall, is not so striking. The 
explanation of a 'fall-rise* sequence by spurt after disturbance 
or spurt after fatigue is really unwise, however. For if the 
fall is caused by a disturbance, no cause is required for the rise 
save the ending of the disturbance; while if no external cause 
is known for a given fall, there is no reason why one should 
pretend to know the cause of its sequent rise. The wiser effort 
Would be to seek hypotheses which would account for rise- 
fall, rise-rise, fall-fall, and fall-rise sequences, one and all, 
and, until such hypotheses could be subjected to verification, 
to be content with attributing them to 'accidental' variations. 

Warming Up 

The best definition of 'warming-up' as an objective act is 
that part of an increase of efficiency during the first 20 minutes 
(or some other assigned early portion) of a work period, 
which is abolished by a moderate rest, say of 60 minutes. 
Such warming-up should show itself clearly in individuals at 
or near the limit of practice, and, in others, should compound 
with the effect of practice to make the rise in efficiency 
especially rapid in the first twenty minutes of work, or the 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 299 

fall (supposing the function to diminish in efficiency) specially 
slow in this same period. What time is assigned in the definition 
of warming-up effect is of little consequence to the investi- 
gation so long as some time is assigned. 

There is little or no direct evidence of warming-up in the 
records got by Oehrn ['95], Lindley ['00], Weygandt ['97], 
Bolton ['02], Miesemer ['02], or Rivers and Kraepelin ['96]. 
Possible indirect evidence of it may be got from the finding 
of Wimms ['07] that 20 minutes of work at simple com- 
putation, but in a form involving trying control of the eye's 
fixations, was more efficient when done in two equal periods 
with a ten-minute rest between than when either no rest or 
a 20-minute rest was given. My sixteen subjects ['11] work- 
ing at mental multiplication of a three-place by a three-place 
number showed signs of its presence, but not conclusively. 

It seems likely, from the cruder observations of daily life, 
that for many individuals in many functions, there is a warm- 
ing-up effect as defined, but I am unable, with the data at 
hand from Kraepelin' s pupils or others, to separate out this 
temporary improvement that comes at the beginning of the 
exercise of a function after rest, from the more permanent 
improvement that comes from exercise of the function in 
general. I am confident that it has commonly been exagger- 
ated. It should also be noted that intellectual warming-up in 
the popular sense refers rather to fore-exercise of other func- 
tions, in order to get materials and motives with which and 
by which the given function is to work, than to an intrinsic 
alteration of it. 

There is also probably often a rapid relearning, with con- 
sequent rise in the score, ciuring the first few minutes of a 
practice-period. This is perhaps what is meant by Warm- 
ing-Up or Incitement by certain writers. It is doubtful 



30Cr THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

whether a rest of sixty minutes or so would abolish this 
rise in the score resulting from relearning. And it seems more 
useful to think of a rise due to relearning in the terms which 
exactly describe it, rather than in the vaguer terms — Anregung, 
Incitement, or Warming-Up. 

Summary 

The essential empirical facts about the curve of mental 
work seem then to be as follows : Two hours or less of 
continuous exercise of a function at maximum efficiency, so 
far as the worker can make it so, produce a temporary negative 
effect, curable by rest, of not over ten per cent, and in most 
functions still less than that. Fluctuations of considerable 
amount occur in any one work period for any one subject, 
but except for a rise in achievement of approximately four per 
cent near the end when the date of the end is known, no 
regularity in them has been proved for any one of them for 
any one subject in any one sort of work, much less for any 
one subject in all sorts of work, or for all subjects in any 
one sort of work. The supposed laws that the very first few 
minutes and the minutes after a drop in efficiency are periods 
of specially high efficiency are not supported by the facts. 
A special gradual increase in efficiency in the first fifteen or 
twenty minutes is not demonstrable in the case of the simple 
functions such as addition, mental multiplication, marking 
words of certain sorts and the like. The fluctuations in a 
single day's record for a single subject are then in no sense 
explained by referring them to fervor at starting, fervor after 
disturbance, fervor after fatigue, incitement or adaptation. 

The most important fact about the curve of efficiency of 
& function under two hours or less continuous maximal 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 301 

exercise is that it is, when freed from daily eccentricities, so 
near a straight line and so near a horizontal line. The work 
grows much less satisfying or much more unbearable, but 
not much less effective. The commonest instinctive response 
to the intolerability of mental work is to stop it altogether. 
When, as under the conditions of the experiments, this 
response is not allowed, habit leads us to continue work at 
our standard of speed and accuracy. Such falling off from 
this standard as does occur is, in the writer's opinion, due to 
an unconscious reduction of the intolerability, by intermit- 
ting the work or some parts of it. 

THE CURVE OF SATISFYINGNESS 

All our measurements so far have been of the quantity 
and quality of the product, not of the satisfyingness of the 
process. Of the latter, indeed, there have been only occasional 
and very crude reports. No one has ever made the experiment 
of arranging with workers that they should work at least 
two hours, and be given, say, two cents a minute for every 
minute that they continue at maximal exertion beyond two 
hours, being compelled to pay two cents for every minute less 
than two hours if they stop work. Nor has any experimenter 
equated the requirement of X production or the privilege of 
Y rest at given stages in a period of production with any 
measure of value whatever. 

In ordinary life, such equating is of enormous importance. 
Having, say, a thousand sums to compute, one does them all 
rapidly and continuously, resting at the end; or at moderate 
speed, not resting at all ; or rapidly at first, and then more and 
more slowly; or one inserts a thousand rests of two seconds; 
or eight or ten rests of three or four minutes; and so on 



302 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

through the infinite variety of ways of administering one's 
mental production. What one does is determined in large 
measure precisely by balancing the satis fyingness of money- 
rewards, free time, following familiar customs, and the like 
against the annoyingness of this or that feature of the process. 
John, who is annoyed by hurry, inserts his rests bit by bit. 
James, who is more annoyed by the lack of free time for some 
cherished pursuit, saves his rests till the product is complete. 

Anyone who undergoes experiments in working mentally 
as continuously and perfectly as he can for a long period can 
get some rough idea of the curve of satisfyingness for his own 
case, with the function in question, in the circumstances of 
competing desires in question. In the general accounts of 
mental work and fatigue, the impressions obtained thus, or 
from the ordinary experiences of life, play a part. The notion 
of Warming-Up, for example, has included the diminishing 
annoyance of a process due to the progressive inattention to 
competing desires, interest in achievement, and the like. So, 
also, the effect of knowledge that the end is nigh in producing 
a spurt is attributed, and probably rightly, in part to the fact 
that the satisfyingness of reaching the end, and of using one's 
last chance to do one's utmost spreads to make the process 
itself more satisfying. 

The curve of satisfyingness need not follow the curve of 
achievement. The slight amount of the decrease in efficiency, 
due to continued exercise of a function under the condition 
that one shall do his utmost throughout, may be accompanied 
by a very great decrease in the satisfyingness of the process. 
The very individual who after five or six hours, adds or 
multiplies more rapidly and accurately than ever, may be in a 
condition which would in ordinary life make him stop the work 
on grounds of absolute unfitness to continue. The supposed 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 303 

unfitness would not be an inevitable inefficiency in the function 
itself, but the effort, tension and misery for which its un- 
satisfyingness was responsible. Indeed, the less a man was 
fatigued in the sense of becoming unable to produce, the more 
he might be fatigued in the sense of finding the process 
intolerable. 

Although little can be said about the effects of any given 
continued task on satisfyingness, such are of very great im- 
portance. In ordinary life the amount, rate and changes in 
rate of increase or decrease in the efficiency of a given function 
are not determined in any simple mechanical way by the 
amount of energy possessed at the start, the opportunity for 
it to be spent, and the lengths of rest periods devoted to its 
recuperation. Nor are they determined by mysterious ten- 
dencies, Fervor at Beginning, Spurt after Disturbance, Anre- 
gung or Warming Up, Arbeitsbereitschaft, and so on. They are 
determined, as are any responses of the animal, by its original 
tendencies, past experiences and present attitude, including 
the tendencies to be satisfied and to be annoyed by this and that 
state of affairs. 

A man does not, by beginning to add, open a valve which 
releases mental energy at a rate depending on the store of 
it possessed. Inactivity does not necessarily restore the energy. 
Nor does the valve work wider and wider open by Anregung, 
or widen and contract every few seconds by the Rhythm of 
Attention, or open very wide by a strange foresight just before 
it is to be closed. A man's behavior during two hours of 
adding is a series of responses to whatever of the original 
situation persists plus the new elements due to each stage of 
the work. These responses are conditioned only slightly by 
such changes in the animal as can properly be likened to a 
lessening of a fund of energy. The appeals of ungratified 






304 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

impulses as they weaken by inattention or grow stronger by 
the lapse of time, the loss of the zest of novelty as the same 
process is repeated, the sensory pains from strained posture, 
misuse of the eyes and the like — are all as truly effective in 
determining the work-curves of ordinary life as is the mere 
amount of time employed or product produced. But these 
act primarily on the satisfyingness of the process and only 
indirectly on the quality and quantity of the product.. 



chapter xx 
Mental Fatigue (continued) 

the influence of continuous mental work, special or 
general, upon general ability 

It is really idle to inquire whether fatigue is specific or 
general — whether, that is, continued work at one function 
diminishes efficiency in only it, or in all functions equally. 
We do not have to choose between these alternatives. The 
first is almost always, and the latter always, false. It is a 
separate problem to tell for any given loss in efficiency of 
any function due to its exercise without rest just what the 
effect upon every other function will be. Some functions will 
suffer little or not at all ; others, much. The real questions are : 
"How much does continued work at any one or any combi- 
nation of tasks diminish efficiency for any other task?" and 
"How does it?" 

The same doctrine of transfer by identical elements noted 
in the case of the influence of improvement in one mental 
function upon the efficiency of other functions is applicable 
here to the influence of diminished efficiency. However, as 
was noted in the case of practice, we usually lack the know- 
ledge by which to know beforehand in what respects and to 
what extent two functions are physiologically identical. More- 
over, we lack, in the majority of cases, knowledge of how 
the various elements of a function share in the total loss in 

20 305 



306 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

efficiency. Consequently, if a function, say, adding, loses one 
fifth in efficiency as a result of five hours of work, it is as 
yet impossible to prophesy the resulting loss in another 
ability, say, to memorize nonsense syllables, save very roughly. 

The clearest cases of identical elements important in the 
transfer of fatigue, are the headaches and deprivations. A 
headache produced by five hours of mental multiplication may 
act equally to diminish efficiency in writing poetry. The 
deprivations from sleep, exercise, sociability, games and the 
like are common elements of very many different forms of 
mental work. Just as learning not to be distracted by certain 
impulses is a means of improvement common to many func- 
tions, so the increased urgency of these impulses due to long 
deprivation may be a means of decreasing efficiency in many 
functions. In many of the actual tasks of school, professional, 
business and industrial work, eye-strain is an important 
identical element. Factors essentially irrelevant to fatigue 
itself — notably, excitement, worry, sleeplessness and loss of 
appetite — may appear in connection with work at one task 
and diminish efficiency for many, or even all, other tasks. 

Students of mental work and fatigue have not, however, 
commonly thought of the problem as a series of special 
problems of the influence of a given amount of work with 
a given function or functions upon the temporary efficiency of 
each of countless others. They have thought of mental work 
vaguely as the work of 'the mind' or 'the brain,' and have 
openly or tacitly accepted one or another form of the theory 
that continuous work reduced some supply of mental energy. 
They have commonly assumed therefore that any work must 
reduce the efficiency of the mind for all work. 

They seem to have expected also that any work would 
reduce the efficiency of the mind equally for all work. The 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 2>°7 

questions in their minds have been, "Does this or that work 
temporarily enfeeble the mind?" and "Does such and such a 
test measure power to work?" 

There resulted about a dozen investigations each attempt- 
ing" to measure the effect of a more or less well defined amount 
of mental work upon the efficiency of some convenient sample 
of the mind's operations. 

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS 

Samples of the facts are, briefly, as follows : 
Sikorski ['79], testing the same children first before school 
and then after school in writing from dictation, found the 
average percentage of wrong letters to be for six grades :* 
Before school 1.24 1.2 1 .72 .66 .61 .46 
After school 1.57 1.45 1.03 .94 .81 .80 
The central tendency is thus toward a third more errors in 
the late tests (.7 and .10). 

I trust that the reader is not so unsophisticated as to 
assume that the above figures, even if taken at their face 
value, show an efficiency before school 1.33 times that exist- 
ing after school. They as truly mean that, since about 99.3 
per cent of the letters were correct in the morning, and about 
99.0 per cent after school, the efficiency before school was 
1.0033 times that existing after school. 

Bolton ['92] reports the results of tests, arranged in 
cooperation with Dr. Franz Boas, to measure the number of 
digits that could be remembered after a single hearing (using 
lists of 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8) early and late in the school day. 
He tested 136 pupils four times in the morning, and 219 

* Sikorski carelessly took no account of the speed of work, so that hi 
did not measure the efficiency of the function at all. 



308 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

pupils four times — first, late in the session; second, early 
the next morning ; third, late in that day's session ; and fourth, 
early the next morning. Each test comprised twelve series 
of figures. The 219 pupils did almost exactly as well at the 
end as at the beginning of the session, though the combined 
result of practice and novelty should have made the second 
and fourth tests better than the first and third. The 219 
pupils also improved as much from morning to night as from 
night to morning, and as much as the 136 pupils used as a 
check improved from one test to the next. Indeed, the data 
show a slight apparent advantage in the late period. 

Friedrich ['97] tested a class of 51 pupils of an average 
age of 10 years, on eleven occasions during a period of six 
weeks, using dictation, addition and multiplication. The last 
two were of the type gffgff and ~ (?r fc 4> fc or 6h 

With the dictations there was an increase in the number 
of errors in later over earlier periods, and in the same periods 
without previous rest over earlier periods with rest; but as 
no record was kept of the speed of the work, efficiency can- 
not be measured. From the results of other similar tests, it 
is probable that the speed increased. The results as to 
accuracy are given in Table 14. 

Friedrich gave twenty minutes time for about 206 single 
additions or multiplications. Consequently all but the very 
slowest pupils finished all the examples before the time was 
up, so that we have no record at all of the speed of the work 
after the first test, and only a very imperfect and distorted record 
for that. Now it is known from the results of other workers 
that in repeated tests with such simple additions and multi- 
plications, a child tends to work more and more rapidly at 
the cost of accuracy. The number of errors is then certainly 
a wrong measure of efficiency. Apparently, if he had recorded 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 309 

the time taken, he would have found, even allowing- a dis- 
count of so many as ten additions for each error, no decrease 
whatever in the efficiency-scores for the tests late in the school 
day. His gross results as to accuracy are given in Table 6. 

Table 6. 

The Results Obtained by Friedrich Concerning the Accuracy of 
School Work at Different Periods of the Day. 

Letters, etc.. Figures of sums 
Time of test written in and products in 

Dictations Computations 

Per- Per- Per- Per- 
cent cent cent cent 
right wrong right wrong 

Before ist hour 99.8 .2 98.9 1.1 

After ist hour 99.6 .4 98.4 1.6 

m After 2nd hour and 8 min. rest 99.3 .7 98.0 2.0 

b •§ After 2nd hour 99.2 .8 98.0 2.0 

•§ $ After 3rd hour and two 15 min. rests 99.4 .6 98.1 1.9 

After 3rd hour and 15 min. rest 99.0 1.0 97.8 2.2 

After 3rd hour 99.0 1.0 97.7 2.3 

b Before ist hour 99.8 .2 98.1 1.9 

g .2 After ist hour 99.2 .8 97.9 2.1 

£ S After 2nd hour and 15 min. rest 99.4 .6 97.9 2.1 

< After 2nd hour 98.9 1.1 97.6 2.4 

As with Sikorski's results, so with Friedrich's, the number 
of errors has been carelessly taken as a direct measure of 
inefficiency. Binet and Henri, for example, print a diagram 
like Fig. 63, which gives the impression that efficiency 
decreases enormously with the progress of the school-day and 
the absence of rests. Even supposing the speed of work to 
have remained constant, this diagram is very misleading. 
Efficiency is as properly measured by the number written 
correctly as by the inverse of the number written incorrectly. 
If the former measure is used, the diagram becomes Fig. 64. 
Fig. 63 and Fig. 64 measure absolutely the same fact. The 
case is as if we had a man's gains and losses in trade for 



3IO THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

consecutive hours of the day. Suppose him to have made 
998 dollars and lost 2 dollars the first hour, to have made 

+ 

+ 



0.5/0 



1 I I I I L L f C I f 

Fig. 63. Friedrich's Results, Scored by Percentages Wrong. 

996 dollars and lost 4 dollars the second hour, and so on. 
Both gains and losses should figure in estimating his efficiency. 
Now in the case in hand, we do not know how much more 

10$+ + + + + + ^ * g f $ 



50$ 



1 1 ( I 1 » 1 » 1 r 1 

Fig. 64. Friedrich's Results, Scored by Percentages Right. 

efficiency is required to copy correctly 998 out of a thousand 
letters than to copy 996. The first performance is, however, 
surely not twice times as efficient. 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 



311 



The author ['00], eliminating the influence of both practice 
and novelty by the simple expedient of never giving the 
same test twice to any individual, found the efficiency of 
school children (in adding,* multiplying,! marking mis- 
spelled words on a page of print, J memorizing lists of 10 
digits, 5 nonsense syllables, § 10 letters and 6 simple forms,TJ 
and counting dots) substantially the same at near the end 
as at the beginning of the school session. 

The children who were tested with one function early in 
the school session were tested with another function late in 
the session. Thus no child ever repeats any test, and all 
influence of practice and novelty is avoided. At the same 
time any influence upon the results from the accidental 
superiority of one half of the children to the other half can 
be detected and allowed for. The number of children taking 
a test varied from 240 to 700. Since all the tests were given 
by the author and his assistant, each one's time being equally 
divided between 'early' and 'late' tests, the only factor 
left to produce any difference is the difference of time of day, 

* With examples, each of five four-place numbers. 

tWith 9 examples like Jg6 

$ With a passage like : 

After waiting some time Captain B — and myself walked acros 
the rice fields to the shad of a tree. There we herd the trumpett 
of an elephant : we reshed etc. 

§ With the following : 

ba ni su et ko and ig fa tu le ro 

If The forms being : 






312 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

with whatever differences in amount of school work and 
other factors it implied. 

The following facts appeared : 
Experiment i. — Those who did the multiplication work 
late in the session did 99.3 per cent as much and made 3.9 
per cent more mistakes than those who did it early, and 
numbered 64 who misunderstood or grossly failed in the 
test against 56 among the early ones. 

Experiment 2. — The test in marking misspelled words 
which was given early to those who did the multiplication 
late, and vice versa, shows the following results for those who 
took it late as compared with those who took it early. Rela- 
tive amount of page covered, 99.0 per cent; relative number 
of words marked, 105.0 per cent; relative number of words 
marked improperly, 97.9 per cent. Thus the decrease in 
ability shown in test 1 is offset by an equal increase in the 
case of test 2. 

Experiments 3 and 4. — Tests in memorizing figures were 
given to four classes early and four late. Taking both to- 
gether, we find that the pupils who did the work late in the 
forenoon or late in the afternoon memorized almost 2 per cent 
more than those who had the work early. But with tests in 
memorizing letters and nonsense syllables, where the pupils 
were reversed, we find the late pupils memorized only 98 per 
cent as much as the early with test 4, and 99.8 per cent as 
much with test 7. So here again the balance is practically 
equal. 

Experiments 5 and 6. — The test in memorizing forms was 
given late to only half the total group of pupils; and the 
set who took it early were shown by the other tests to be 
a little more intelligent. Here the late pupils did only 94.6 
per cent as well. That this was wholly due to a difference 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 3 13 

in average ability is also witnessed by the fact that when 75 
per cent of these scholars were tested in counting dots (those 
who memorized forms early counted dots late, and vice versa) 
the scholars taking the test late did much more than five per 
cent better. 

If we take account of the conditions of the experiments 
and replace partial by adequate measures of efficiency, the 
apparent conflict between the results of Sikorski and Friedrich 
on the one hand, and those of Bolton and Thorndike on the 
other, turns out a harmony. The work in late periods is really 
only a little better or a little worse than in early periods. 
There is a general tendency of school children to increase 
speed at the expense of precision in repeated tests in adding, 
copying and the like. This fact has permitted the illusion of 
great deficiency and led to the fallacy of interpreting a series 
like "99 right, 1 wrong; 98 right, 2 wrong; 97 right, 3 
wrong" as "1 wrong; 2 wrong; 3 wrong," and then as 
"Early Efficiency = 1 ; Middle efficiency = y 2 ; Late efficiency 
= Yz •" It is the false inferences only that are in conflict 
with the result, "Efficiency approximately equal at all three 
periods." 

The results obtained by other investigators agree sub- 
stantially in showing similarly that ability to work is, in school 
pupils, throughout and at the close of the school session, 
almost or quite unimpaired.* When the effects of both 
novelty and practice are eliminated, no differences in achieve- 
ment appear as a result of the work of the school session. 
Where they are not eliminated the former seems approximately 

* Whether school pupils do, in fact, ordinarily achieve much less 
in late than in early periods is left as a question for educational ex- 
periments to decide. The common impression amongst teachers that they 
do may be to a large extent illusory. 



314 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

to balance the latter. It is clear from the facts summarized 
that the assertions made in text-books on school hygiene that 
there are great and important differences between the results 
of tests at different periods of the school session, are quite 
unjustifiable. The very results referred to in support of these 
assertions disprove them. 

GENERAL THEORIES OF MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 

We can now return to some of the fundamental facts 
about mental work and fatigue. In the course of our survey 
of the facts known concerning mental work and fatigue we 
have been led to define the real questions involved so as to 
relieve them from vagueness and to discourage merely verbal 
answers to them. Instead of pretending to describe changes 
in mental energy available following upon energy expended, 
we have measured the changes in the quantity and quality 
of certain products when the individual produces them as 
incessantly as he can. The change in, say, four hours of 
such production can be studied by itself, or be compared with 
the change in four hours of production distributed in any other 
way. The production at the end of such a period can be 
compared with that after an interval of no production. 

We could also measure, though this has not been done, 
the satisfyingness or intolerability of the process of produc- 
tion at any stage. 

Mental work has been noted as an ambiguous term, mean- 
ing on the one hand (i) mental achievement — the production 
of certain products, and on the other hand (2) mental effort 
— the initiation or continuance or prevention or cessation oi 
a certain response in spite of the intrinsic relative unsatisfy- 
ingness of that behavior. 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 315 

Mental rest is similarly ambiguous. In thinking about it 
one should make clear whether he is concerned with (i) 
mental inactivity — the absence of mental achievement, or with 
(2) mental relaxation — the absence of mental effort. 

The efficiency of a function may be defined as the quantity 
and quality of the product produced (i) per unit of time, or 
(2) per unit of time with a given amount of effort. Call the 
former the gross efficiency of the function; and the latter, 
its analyzed efficiency. 

If we stick to the first meaning — the objective fact — in 
each case, we have a series of useful objective definitions 
of important facts in behavior, which may be called work, 
rest and fatigue, as follows : 

Mental work (achievement) is the behavior of an organ- 
ism whereby certain products* are produced. Continuous 
mental work means the behavior of an individual who is 
producing as incessantly as he can. 

Rest (inactivity) of a single function is an interval in 
which the individual does nothing toward that sort of pro- 
duction. General rest similarly would mean an interval in which 
he did nothing toward production of any sort. This perfect 
general rest is of course only approximated. 

The fatigue of a function is that diminution in its pro- 
ductivity or gross efficiency which inactivity! can cure. 

The 'fatigue/ so defined, due to two hours of work seems 
to be very small. In general, under pressure from the deter- 
mination to continue doing one's utmost, the associative 
mechanism of the brain involved in any given mental function 
seems to work for a long time with a very slight decrease in 

*Such as poems memorized, books written, problems solved, demons 
made, houses planned, lessons taught or prepared, and the like, 
t Either of that function or in general as may be specified. 



3*6 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

gross efficiency. But fatigiie is not necessarily, and is probably 
not in fact, so slight, if it is measured by the diminution in 
analyzed efficiency — in the productivity per unit of time with 
a given amount of effort. It may well be that in order to 
maintain the same degree of satisfyingness at the end as at the 
beginning of the five hours of work, the individuals referred 
to in the above measures would have had to relax in speed 
and carefulness so much as to have shown a decrease in 
efficiency of 30 or 40 per cent on an absolute scale; or an 
increase in the time required, accuracy being constant, of over 
100 per cent. 

The great present need in experimentation on mental work 
is to measure mental effort as fully as mental achievement, 
and so to compute the changes in analyzed efficiency — the 
quality and quantity of the product per unit of time with a 
given amount of effort. 

We may distinguish the maximum power of a man's 
neurones to make certain connections from their readiness to 
do so. A man may be able (in the former sense) to multiply 
629 by 736 as quickly as ever, at a time when the work is ten 
times as intolerable. 

All the facts, both of experimental studies and of every- 
day life, support the hypothesis that the effect of continuous 
exercise upon readiness is far quicker, greater and more 
significant than its effect upon maximum power. Fatigue in 
the vague popular sense means that we are less willing rather 
than that we are less able, that the probability of achievement 
is decreased by the increased effort that it requires rather than 
that the possibility of achievement is decreased inevitably, — 
that the activity of the function becomes less satisfying rather 
than intrinsically and necessarily feebler. 

The ultimate physiological explanation of the phenomena 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 3 17 

of mental work and fatigue will therefore, I venture to 
prophesy, be found largely in the conditions of readiness 
and unreadiness of the neurones, and the main practical 
problem of the administration of mental work will be found 
to be the problem of interest. 

The 'Mechanical' or 'Energy theory and the 'Biological' o? 
'Response' theory 

In the early discussions of mental work and fatigue, the 
use of the term Work led thinkers naturally enough to follow 
the train of thought suggested by physics and to conceive of 
mental work as the consequence of expenditure of mental 
energy, of fatigue as the consumption of a stock of potential 
energy, and of rest as an opportunity for its restoration. If 
left vague enough, such a mechanical theory of the operation 
of mental functions does no great harm, but it is almost always 
misleading; and, when it is at all rigorously defined, it be- 
comes, I think, either meaningless or wrong. Some of the 
reasons for preferring what may be called the Biological 
Theories or Response Theories or Extrinsic Theories of mental 
work and fatigue, may be briefly mentioned. 

The first reason is that the rate of change in efficiency as 
more and more work is done without rest is not such as should 
be the case by a mechanical theory. It is far too irregular. 
The curves of work, special or general, have no such evenness 
as the curve for the pressure from a reservoir whence water 
runs out faster than it runs in, or the curve of force of impact 
of a ball dropped from steadily decreasing heights. 

The mechanical theories of work consequently have to 
invent various subsidiary forces to act in conjunction with 
the loss of energy so as to produce the irregular course which 



3l8 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

efficiency actually takes under continuous work. For example, 
the fact of a gain in efficiency in the first ten or twenty or even 
forty minutes of work, contrary, of course, to expectation 
from the loss-of-energy doctrine, is attributed to the influence 
of Incitement or Warming-Up or Anregung. Similarly the 
fact of a frequent gain in efficiency in the last ten minutes 
of work, provided the worker is aware that they are the last, 
is attributed to a tendency to Final Spurt — to an increased 
'exertion of the will' due to knowledge that the end of work 
is near. The resort to these subsidiary factors is, of course, 
an admission that loss in energy is not an adequate cause of the 
changes in the amount of work done hour by hour as work is 
continued. 

The second argument concerns the enormous potency of 
interest in maintaining, and of repugnance in diminishing, 
efficiency in work without rest. Consider, for example, the 
effect of an. offer, made at the end of the tenth hour of work, 
to give the worker a thousand dollars for every one per cent 
of improvement above his last hour's score. Consider 
similarly the probable work-curves resulting when a devotee 
of the game plays chess, and when he answers undesired and 
unprofitable questions, in each case for five or six continuous 
hours. Interest does not add to, nor does repugnance sub- 
tract from, a store of energy. By the mechanical theories 
rest and work monopolize these two functions. Interest could, 
at the most, only release the energy faster. But it is a fact 
easily verifiable that interest does add to, and that repugnance 
does subtract from, the amount of work done. The amount 
of work done then cannot depend closely upon the magnitude 
of a supply of mechanically conceived energy. 

Finally the nature of mental work and of decreased 
efficiency in it, make the hypothesis of a usable and restorable 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 3 19 

supply of energy inappropriate. Consider any representative 
samples of mental work — e. g., addition, solving geometrical 
problems, writing essays, devising arguments, correcting 
examination papers, reading proof. The work is the pro- 
duction of the right responses to certain situations. The mere 
amount of movement, of consciousness, or of neurone action 
is irrelevant. If we are to have a physical metaphor to illus- 
trate mental work, we may say that the work of adding 7 
and 9 is not like moving a pound through a foot against 
gravity, but is like the work of moving a pound of lead from 
a given space in Boston to a given space in New York. 
The mere physical work of the latter varies enormously, 
according to the condition of the vehicle used, the condition 
of the roads travelled, the route taken, and the opposition en- 
countered from , fire, flood, living animals and other natural 
forces. There is always a qualitative demand and a variety 
of obstacles to be overcome, and a choice of ways and means. 
No physical metaphor is desirable. All that is meant by 
mental work is getting the required responses to certain situ- 
ations. All that is meant by fatigue is the temporary 
diminution in the efficiency in making such required con- 
nections which comes from incessantly making them. Why 
the diminished efficiency should be so caused is a matter for 
investigation, not presupposition. All that a supply of 'mental 
energy' could properly mean would be a supply of power to 
make the required connections ; and since what hinders mak- 
ing a connection in learning is its consequences, the reasonable 
expectation is that what will hinder making it in fatigue will be 
its consequences. An animal tends to repeat a connection 
when repeating it brings a satisfying state of affairs, and 
may be expected to discontinue it when repeating it annoys 
him. An animal would seem likely to discontinue or decrease 



320 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

mental work because continuing it annoys him rather than 
because some inner fund of impulsion, which might be likened 
to physical potential energy, was running low. The more 
promising theory would seem to be one that explained why 
mental work continued without rest became less and less 
satisfying. 

This the Biological or Response Theory tries to do. Work 
without rest, it maintains, becomes less satisfying (i) by 
losing the zest of novelty, (2) by producing ennui, a certain 
intellectual nausea, sensory pains and even headache, and (3) 
by imposing certain deprivations — for instance, from physical 
exercise, social intercourse, or sleep. 

That these facts of behavior are found where diminished 
efficiency as a result of work without rest is found, is a fact 
subject to verification by observation and experiment. Even 
the advocates of a mechanical theory will hardly deny it. 
That they cause the loss in efficiency is shown by the gain 
which follows their elimination. Varying the superficial form 
of arithmetical drills, while exercising the same mental func- 
tion, will postpone the loss in efficiency by maintaining the 
force of novelty. The addition of a money reward, or of a 
demonstration that the work is useful for some desired end, 
or of competition for excellence, may temporarily abolish 
fatigue by abolishing the ennui. The common phrase that 
one is 'tired of certain work represents a certain stage of 
fatigue better than 'tired by' it does. 

The extreme condition where the mind seems literally 
nauseated — will not have anything to do with the problem — 
may be cured similarly by an increase in the value of the 
answers to be got. As a fatigued muscle can be given re- 
newed efficiency by washing out or counteracting the pro- 
ducts created by its action, so a fatigued mind can be in 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE S 21 

part restored by washing out ennui and repugnance by in- 
attention or counteracting them by interest and motive. It 
is harder to eliminate experimentally sensory pains and head- 
aches, but it seems probable that if these incubi could be lifted 
off, efficiency would rise, 

That eliminating the deprivations, or in clearer phrase, 
permitting the indulgence of certain impulses, increases the 
efficiency of work is almost a crucial experiment for decision 
between the two classes of theory. When a boy regains 
efficiency by being allowed to walk up and down the room, 
or when the presence of a friend to study with her doubles 
a girl's achievement, it is clear that the previous deficiency was 
but little due to a lower pressure from a lessened reservoir 
of energy. 

The effect of mental work without rest in causing 
deprivations, and of rest in permitting the corresponding 
indulgences, has been little studied. Attention has been 
centred upon what happens in the function that is working 
in disregard of the other functions which are being denied 
exercise. It is the fact that we are fatigued by what we do 
not do as truly, and perhaps as much, as by what we do. 
For children not to run and jump and squirm and sing and 
laugh and talk is the essence of mental work. For us all 
not to indulge in our favorite occupations is, as hour after 
hour of reading legal reports, or adding columns, or what- 
ever the task may be, progresses, a more and more impressive 
feature of the task. Cases of special theoretic interest are 
those where the deprivation is from opportunity to do other 
mental work. For, in some such cases, the other work, 
deprivation from which fatigues, and exercises at which rests, 
the individual, would be rated by men in general as very 

21 



322 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

exhausting. By the ordinary energy-theories it would involve 
large expenditures of mental energy. 

If one could count up all the cases where individuals 
have stopped mental work and could know the chief cause 
in each case, it seems likely that the plea of some contrary 
impulse for gratification, some game to be played, sensory 
pleasure to be enjoyed, or the like, would be by far the com- 
monest cause. Rest, again, except when spent in sleep, is not 
as a rule devoted to replenishing lost mental energy. It is 
far oftener devoted to indulging wants which mental work 
proscribes. To read, to talk with one's family and friends, 
to hunt or fish, to play active or sedentary games, and to 
make or listen to music, are occupations that often require 
a large expense of 'mental energy,' however defined, and that 
almost never approximate to the mental inaction of dolce far 
niente or sleep. They rest us by relief from strain and 
irritation, but not by cessation of mental action. 

No theory of mental work and fatigue should then fail 
to take account of what continued work prevents the worker 
from doing. The little child who complained "I am tired of 
not playing," expressed admirably one feature of fatigue. The 
strain of not giving way to certain tendencies to response is 
as important as the strain of continuing certain others. Work 
in the popular sense is distinguished from play or recreation 
less by the amount of positive action than by the amount of 
restriction. We are fatigued by what we do not do. 

On the whole, the biological theory seems much more 
probable. The effect of continuous mental work may be 
in part to use up some store of a complex of patience, self- 
control, vigor and the like, which may be called mental energy, 
but it surely is to produce certain annoying states to which 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 323 

the natural response is a diminution or cessation of the activity 
which causes them. 

The behavior which results in certain products such as 
sums done, dictations written, paragraphs translated, and the 
like, is subject to the laws of all behavior, and to no others. 
If a continuance of the productive responses at the same speed 
and in such a form as to give equal quality, is satisfying to< the 
individual concerned, he will continue them. If such continu- 
ance brings discomfort, he will tend to stop them altogether, 
or to intermit them, or to make them in such altered form 
and speed as lets them bring relative satisfaction. Stopping 
the work outright does not of course occur in the great 
majority of experimental investigations of fatigue, but 
is very common in ordinary mental work. Intermitting 
the work, dropping it, taking it up as thoughts of rewards, 
punishments, duty and the like, make idleness even more dis- 
comforting than the work, dropping it again, and so on, are 
also, in the nature of the case, rare in the experimental studies, 
but very common everywhere else. Relaxing speed and care 
and tension to such a degree that the work is less annoying 
than is the condition of not working (with the consequences 
attached thereto) is the device to which the subjects of the 
experiments are restricted. Whether one relaxes, intermits 
or stops work, the immediate reason is not that he has not 
the 'energy' to go on with it, but that he feels more com- 
fortable to relax, intermit or stop it. Whatever parallel to a 
decreased store of energy there is, is effective chiefly by making 
the responses concerned in production less satisfying than they 
were before. 

THE HYGIENE OF MENTAL WORK 

Readers of this section should remember that we are 



324 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

dealing with mental work — the work of the connection- 
system — not with either the work of the sense organs or the 
work of the muscles which so often accompanies it. This 
matter is of special importance in the case of fatigue of the 
sensory and motor apparatus of the eyes. So-called "mental" 
work in schools, business and professional life involves read- 
ing, writing or visual examination of objects to such an 
extent that the diminution of efficiency below what is desir- 
able and the injuries from work are to a very large extent 
due to inability of the eyes to do what the mind requires and 
to overstrain of the eyes in the mind's service. It is well 
to keep sharply apart the means of increasing the efficiency 
of, and preventing injury from, purely mental work and the 
means of increasing the efficiency of, and preventing injury 
from, the use of the eyes. Interest, for example, rarely injures 
the mind, but may lead to very great harm to the eyes. Rest, 
in the sense of inactivity — the absence of any set task — may, 
through worry, depress or irritate the mind, but it is almost 
always good for the eyes. The theoretical and practical 
problems connected with the use of the eyes should form an 
important topic in educational hygiene, but in this book I 
shall not discuss them. 

The practical application of the facts about mental fatigue 
may best be considered under the two topics — Desirable Means 
of Increasing Efficiency, and Desirable Means of Preventing 
Injury from Over-work. 

Means of Increasing Mental Efficiency 

Roughly we may: (1) increase the organism's mental 
vigor or tendency to mental activity; (2) decrease the resist- 
ance, the forces inhibiting work; (3) improve the direction 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 325 

and method of activity; and (4) relieve the mind from the 
waste of excitement and worry. 

The inner responsiveness of an animal to occasions for 
mental work is most economically improved by improving 
its general health. Other more direct influences limited to 
the connection-system there may be, but the safest hope is the 
maintenance of the health of the entire bodily machine. Con- 
sider the abolition of the effects of indigestion, rickets, chorea 
and scarlet fever, or of insufficient oxygen, food and sleep, 
in the case of children; consider the abolition of the effects 
of malaria, tuberculosis and alcoholism in the case of adults; 
consider even such a very minor factor as the common 'cold.' 

The resistance which blocks mental work may be dimin- 
ished by supplying interest and motive. It has been shown 
that certain kinds and amounts of mental activity are main- 
tained without external subsidies, but much of what has to be 
done creates in the doing ennui, repulsion and pain, and 
deprives the worker of various satisfiers. The worker is 
thereby impelled to decrease, intermit or abandon the work. 
The resistances thus caused are not, however, inevitable, and 
curable only by rest. The same work done with interest does 
not so soon produce ennui and repugnance. The denial of 
certain satisfiers, such as games, conversation or reverie, may 
be balanced by the addition of new ones, such as a money- 
reward, zeal to improve, or confidence that the work will profit 
oneself and others. The inventor, man of science or poet, 
working a score of hours without rest at full efficiency, is 
not an exception to the laws of work, but an illustration of 
them. The limit of work for every man is elastic at the pull 
of interest and personal profit. 

As a muscle becomes anew responsive to the stimulus, 
when the toxic products of its contraction are washed out 



326 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

or neutralized, so a mental function may be made to continue 
its output by washing out the repugnance and need for effort 
by an interest, and neutralizing the pain of restraint by a 
motive. In the case of wise and experienced adults, it is- 
often hard to thus dissolve fatigue by adding interests and 
motives; they perhaps have already themselves used all the 
available ones. But the rank and file have not thus exhausted 
the preventives of repugnance and distraction; and children 
have hardly learned to use any of them. The children of a 
school class may work with doubled efficiency simply from 
learning the significance of the work to their wants, and 
associating the work with sociability, cheerfulness and achieve- 
ment. 

Since individuals differ in their interests the proper 
distribution of the different pieces of work to be performed 
in the world will by diminishing resistance make the sum 
total done larger. If each man did the mental work for which 
he was fit and which he enjoyed, men would work willingly 
much longer than they now do. But if each worked only at 
tasks of real value and with the guidance of exact science, 
men could probably attain equal results though working far 
less than they now do. The best means of increasing efficiency 
are very simple ones — ceasing to learn by roundabout and 
stupid methods what is not so and ceasing to prepare with 
anxiety and pain for what will not occur. The time and 
effort wasted upon superstitions, pedantries and fads of which 
the science of the future will convict us, doubtless make 
the major part of our present burden. 

One can hardly overestimate the value of peace and 
equanimity as means of increasing mental efficiency. Since 
nothing is done by worry or excitement that cannot be done 
better in their absence, there is nothing but gain in saving 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 327 

for achievement the time and strength now spent in ferment 
and ebullition. Too much of the life of home, school, industry, 
business, and even the professions, is still on a par with the 
war dances of primitive man. We need not burn down a 
house to roast a pig. 

Means of Preventing Injury from Over-Work 

A certain amount of mental work is healthful. The con- 
nection-system requires exercise as truly as food and rest. 
It can have too little as well as too much activity; and it 
maintains its 'tone' and power of resistance to mental disease 
better if a certain amount of its activity is 'work' in the service 
of remote and unselfish ends, rather than 'play' for personal 
and immediate gratification. 

Too much work may be injurious positively, not only by 
direct mischief to the neurones doing the work itself, but also 
by producing in the system the states corresponding to over- 
excitement and worry. It may also be injurious negatively 
by depriving the animal of the joy, appetite, physical exercise, 
and sleep essential to health. It may be injurious in the 
broader sense of diminishing the value of life, by its depriva- 
tions, of whatever sort. As men and things now are, the 
direct injury intrinsically and necessarily consequent upon 
mental work, seems to be very, very much less than 
that due to over-excitement, worry, and the physical, intel- 
lectual and moral deprivations. 

For over-excitement and worry from mental work, wise 
formation of habits is the preventive and cure. Mental 
workers should be taught that emotionality is not a measure 
of interest, that tension is not a measure of energy, nor over- 
action of strength, that anxietv is not a measure of devotion, 



328 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

and that peaceful absorption is the feeling proper to achieve- 
ment. Having learned to judge their efficiency, not by how 
they feel, but by what they get done, they should practice 
themselves in casting off every weight of irrelevant thought 
or feeling, in dismissing as unhealthy and immoral all worry 
over what has been done, or what one cannot prevent. 

For the deprivations, the first remedies to be applied are 
healthful physical conditions, interest and motive. Proper 
air and light, proper posture and physical exercise, enough 
food and sleep, and work whose purpose is rational, whose 
difficulty is adapted to one's powers, and whose rewards are 
just, should be tried before recourse to the abandonment of 
work itself. It is indeed doubtful if sheer rest is the appro- 
priate remedy for a hundredth part of the injuries that result 
from mental work in our present irrational conduct of it. 

However, since for many men, for a long time to come, 
mental work probably will be carried on with effort against 
resistance, by individuals who are not properly guarded in 
general health, it is worth while to inquire whether there is 
some point or stage in the course of mental work at which 
a worker should allow himself, or be allowed, or perhaps 
required, to stop work. 

For the unlearned activities and those developing out of 
them in a simple environment of unconquered nature and 
of human beings unsophisticated by ideas, there are present 
certain equally unlearned checks to over-activity. Mental 
work beyond a certain point produces ennui, repugnance, 
sleepiness and pain; prolonged restraint from individual 
or social play produces an intense impulse to its grati- 
fication. In the absence of habits of forcing oneself to 
work in spite of present discomfort and deprivation, these 
natural checks would operate freely. The animal would be 



MENTAL WORK AND FATIGUE 329 

protected against over-work in the same measure that he 
was protected against starvation or over-feeding, by unlearned 
impulses. These would work crudely and imperfectly, some- 
times failing to check the activity aroused by hunger or the 
sex instincts, when rest would be preferable, and sometimes 
letting him rest when continued vigilance would save him. 

In the complicated environment created by human intel- 
lect and morals, man learns to neglect these natural checks 
in favor of more remote and civilized ends, and is forced by 
fear of punishment to work in spite of them. They may 
fail to operate at all, temporary zeal or long habit rendering 
the individual immune to all impulses contrary to the ac- 
complishment of his work. It would perhaps be possible 
for not a single one of these checks to operate, no matter how 
long work continued, until the man, possessed by zeal for 
the beloved achievement, and unwarned by repugnance, sleepi- 
ness or pain, died cheerfully working to the end. 

It is for the welfare of men in the long run not to obey 
these natural checks, but no one simple rational check can be 
used to replace them. It is consequently impossible to find any 
uniform rule for deciding when to stop work. 'Follow 
nature/ 'Work as long as you can,' 'Work until a decrease 
in efficiency appears,' or any other rule announced for alJ 
workers, is bound to be wrong. It is unnecessary for most 
workers to stop when they are bored and sleepy, and it is 
unsafe for some to work until they are. The best practical 
rule seems to be to make sure of adequate exercise and sleep, 
to divide the balance of time reasonably between the duties 
and pleasures of life, and to work throughout the amount of 
time due for work, diminishing the natural checks so far 
as may be by securing proper physical conditions, interest 
and motive, and, for the rest, disregarding them. What 



33° THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

amount of exercise and what amount of sleep are adequate 
varies with age and individuality. To insure against injury, 
the allowance may be made generously. The essence of 
mental hygiene is then — interest for efficiency; and for pro- 
tection, sleep. 



PART HI 

Individual Differences and Their Causes 

chapter xxi 

Introduction 

the problems of individual differences 

In describing the original tendencies of man as a species, 
attention was called to the fact that the original natures of 
individual men and women were not exact duplicates, present- 
ing the characteristics of the human species invariably, but 
deviated from the type of the species in the strength of this, 
that and the other instinct. In describing the laws of learning 
or modifiability and the changes in mental functions which 
learning brings to pass, it was assumed that different indi- 
viduals learned at different rates; and that identical natures 
must, if subjected to the action of different external situations 
or environments, become different. The reports of studies of 
the amount, rate and permanence of improvement gave frequent 
illustrations of the variability of individual men in whatever 
feature of intellect, character or skill we examine. It is the 
purpose of the remaining chapters of this volume to present 
the main facts concerning these individual differences and their 
causes. 

The best means of introduction to the study of individual 
differences, their causes and their educational significance, will 
be to examine an actual first-hand study of them. For this 

331 



332 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



purpose I choose certain parts of Mr. S. A. Courtis' report on 
the arithmetical abilities of children in the schools of New York 
City ['ii-' 12]. 

Mr. Courtis measured the achievements of pupils in respond- 
ing to eight tests. Test 7 is reproduced below. 

ARITHMETIC— Test No. 7. Fundamentals 

Name School Grade 

In the blank space below, work as many of these examples as possible 
in the time allowed. Work them in order as numbered, writing each 
answer in the "answer" column before commencing a new example. Do 
no work on any other paper. 



Num- 
ber 


Operation 


Example 


Answer 


Right 






Addition 1 

Subtraction -j 

Multiplication 

Division 

Addition 

Subtraction 

Multiplication 

Division 

Division 

Addition 

Subtraction 
Multiplication 
Division 
Division 


a 25 -f- 830 + 122 = (Write 

answer in this column) S^p" 3 . 
b 232 + 8021 4- 703 4- 3030 = . . 
a 54.06 — 16^ — 


1 






I 


J 














b 943276 — 812102 — 




2 


I 






2012 X 213 = 

158664 -f- 132 = 

6134 4- 213 4- 4800 4- 6005 4- 
ooco 4- 4.74. = . 




3 








4 








5 








6 


73210142 — 49676378 = 

4650S X 456 = 

27217182 -7- 6 = 








«l 


< 






) 
9 








10) 


3I27I02 -r- 463 — 


1 






") 


(85586 + 69685 + 39397 + 

\ 95836 4- 37768 4- 69666 

( + 78888 4- 54987 = 

15655431 — 5878675 = 

7806^ Y 678 — 




A 


I 






14 








•i\ 


! 






44502486 ~ 7 — 






iy 










5373003 -f- 769 — 





*> 


1 











THE PROBLEMS OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



333 



Consider now the results of Test 7 in a certain eighth- 
grade class as shown in Fig. 65. Consider also Table 7, 
which gives similar facts for all the eighth grade children 



No.ofchiMrer 
sach tcore 



SCORE 


1 

1 

f 

111 
If! 
Wl 

lift 
lift 

mm 

in 

fIMM 
If 

f 


NO. 


17 


1 
1 


16 


15 



1 


14 


13 


3 


1 2. 


3 


1 1 


4 

8 
4 


10 


9 


8 


4 


7 


6 
4 


6 


5 


6 


4- 


2 


3 





a 


1 

J 



Fig. 65. The Variation in Ability 
within a Single Class. After 
Courtis, 'n-'i2, p. 48. 



tested. The picture and this table state an important fact — 
the existence of great individual differences even among those 
of the same school grade, and so of roughly similar training 
in arithmetic — and suggest that differences in original capaci- 



334 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

ties must play a large part in producing the differences that are 
actually found between one human being and another. 



Com- 





Table y. 




The Variation Among 8th 


Grade 


Pupils in Arithmetical 


putation. After Courtis, 'n-'i2, 


p. 46. 




"Score" or 
"Quantity" : 
Examples done 
correctly in 
12 minutes 
in the case 
of Test 7 




Number of 
children making 
each score or 
"Frequency" : 
8th grade 
children in 
New York 
City 


19 




31 


18 




25 


17 




86 


16 




107 


15 




182 


H 




251 


13 




327 


12 




390 


II 




453 


10 




497 


9 




475 


8 




425 


7 




333 


6 




312 


5 




239 


4 




152 


3 




88 


2 




71 


I 




30 


O 




28 



Another problem in the causation of individual differences 
is illustrated by Mr. Courtis' tables comparing the two sexes. 



THE PROBLEMS OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 335 

I quote (in Table 8) the one for Test 6 in the 7B grade.* 
It appears that in the number of examples attempted there 
was little or no difference between the sexes, but that in the 
number of correct answers the boys did somewhat better than 
the girls of the same grade. 

The effects of sex, whether by inherited sex qualities or by 
the circumstances in which training differs for the sexes, have 
been the subject of many speculative opinions and of some few 
impartial investigations. They will be discussed by them- 
selves in Chapter XXII. 

The influence of remote ancestry or race could be studied 
similarly by comparing two groups of children of the same sex, 
age, and training, but different in that the one group sprang 
from, say, East European Hebrews and the other from, say, 
North American Indians. 

* Test 6 was as follows : 

Do not work the following examples. Read each example through, 
make up your mind what operation you would use if you were going 
to work it, then write the name of the operation selected in the blank 
space after the example. Use the following abbreviations : — "Add." for 
addition, "Sub." for subtraction, "Mul." for multiplication, and "Div." for 
division. 

1. The children of a school gave a sleighride party. There 
were 9 sleighs used, and each sleigh held 30 children. How many 
children were there in the party ? 

2. Two school-girls played a number game. The score of the 
girl that lost was 57 points and she was beaten by 16 points. 
What was the score of the girl that won ? 

3. A girl counted the automobiles that passed a school. The 
total was 60 in two hours. If the girl saw 27 pass the first hour 
how many did she see the second ? 

4. On a playground there were five equal groups of children 
each playing a different game. If there were 75 children alto- 
gether, how many were there in each group ? 

And so on for twelve similar examples. 



Opera- 
tion 

















■ 



336 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



Other possible causes of differences in arithmetical achieve- 
ment are : — differences in near ancestry or 'family,' differences 
in maturity, and differences in the length of time devoted to 
arithmetic in the schools, in the methods used in teaching it, or 
in other circumstances of train r ng\ 



Table 8. 

Sex Differences in a Speed Test in Reasoning: 
th« 7B Grades Compared. After Courtis, 'n-'i2, p. 



Boys and Girls in 
138. 



Quantity : 






Quantity : 




Number of 






Number of 




Examples 


Frequency in 7 B 


Examples 


Frequency in 7 B 


attempted 


Grade 


done correctly 


Grade 


in Test 6 






in Test 6 




in 1 minute 






in 1 minute 






Boys 


Girls 


16 


Boys 


Girls 


16 


I 


6 


1 




15 






15 






14 


1 




14 






13 


4 


3 


13 






12 


7 


6 


12 


1 


I 


II 


7 


11 


11 




2 


10 


15 


18 


10 


6 


4 


9 


34 


21 


9 


10 


4 


8 


59 


52 


8 


23 


n 


7 


119 


88 


7 


50 


24 


6 


240 


216 


6 


no 


61 


5 


287 


273 


5 


197 


132 


4 


238 


230 


4 


245 


197 


3 


161 


172 


3 


245 


236 


2 


55 


65 


2 


201 


273 


1 


6 


6 


1 


113 


175 





1 


1 





33 


43 



In this sample study the individual differences amongst 
pupils have been displayed in the form of tables of distribution, 
giving the frequency of each degree of ability — that is, the 



THE PROBLEMS OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



337 



number or percentage of individuals of each degree of ability. 
The main features of such a frequency table or table of distri- 
bution can be seen at once in their relations one to another, if 



TABLE q. 
Sample of Distribution Tables. 



Distribution of 
Progress in School 
among Connecticut 

children in 1903 

Quantity : Frequency 

Grade Number 

reached at of 

age of 10 Children 



Distribution of Ability 

in Copying Figures in 

6th grade children. 

After Courtis, 

'11-'12, p. 54 



Distribution of Ability 

in Adding Pairs of 

One-Place Numbers in 

High-School Pupils. 

After Courtis, 

'11-12, p. 52 



Quantity : 

Number of 
digits copied 6th Grade 
in 60 seconds Children 



Frequency Quantity : Frequency 
Number of in 

pairs added High School 
in 60 seconds Pupils 












to 


9 


9 










Kinder- 




10 


ft 


19 


12 










garten 


9 


20 


a 


29 


22 


20 


to 


29 


2 


ist grade 


442 


30 


a 


39 


18 


30 


" 


39 


4 


2nd 


ft 


1389 


40 


" 


49 


57 


40 


« 


49 


4i 


3rd 


tt 


3293 


50 


a 


59 


107 


50 


" 


59 


113 


4th 


tt 


4433 


60 


11 


69 


291 


60 


tt 


09 


272 


5th 


" 


3200 


70 


" 


79 


536 


70 


a 


79 


235 


6th 


tt 


1227 


80 


" 


80 


1274 


80 


u 


89 


196 


7th 


n 


237 


90 


K 


99 


1256 


90 


tt 


99 


86 


8th 


tt 


48 


100 


tt 


109 


1066 


.100 


a 


109 


43 


9th 


a 


4 


no 


" 


119 


494 


no 


U 


119 


2 


[Oth 


it 


1 


120 
130 
140 
i50 
160 
170 
180 


a 
tt 


129 

139 
149 

159 
169 
179 
189 


359 
64 
36 
19 
47 
2 
1 


120 




129 


2 



it is presented in graphic form, by letting intervals along a hori- 
zontal base-line or scale denote the different scores made or 
degrees of ability found, and letting the height of a horizontal 
line over each such interval represent the number of individuals 



338 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



possessing that degree of ability. By joining the separate 
horizontals a surface of frequency is enclosed. 

Such distribution tables and the corresponding surfaces of 
frequency for certain specified groups of individuals are shown 
in Table 9 and Figs. 66, 6j and 68 for the cases of Grade 
reached by Connecticut children at the age of 10, Speed of 
sixth-grade children in copying figures, and Efficiency of high- 
school children in adding pairs of one-place numbers. 



4000 



3000 



-2000 



- 1000 



1000 

children 



k 9 . 1 



I Bf V VI I I K X 



FlG o i 66 *i J he , Number of 10-year-old Children in Connecticut (1903), in Each 
School Grade. 

Such tables of distribution or surfaces of frequency are the 
terms in which the student of individual psychology must do 
very much of his thinking, both when he tries to describe, and 
when he tries to account for, the variation of human beings 
around the type of the species. In the next chapter, for 
example, in comparing the sexes, in respect to one or another 
mental trait, we shall have to think of the surface of frequency 
for men in each trait and the surface of frequency for women 
in the same trait and to compare these two total surfaces of 
frequency. 



THE PROBLEMS OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



339 



-1000 



500 



2S0 

children 



10 10 30 40 50 



ISO 



Fig. 67. The Number . of Sixth-Grade Children in New York City Copying 0-9 
Digits, 10 to 19 Digits, etc., in 60 Seconds. 



— 200 



100 



50 

fiu|)ils 



20 30 HO SO 6.0 10 80 etc. 

Fig. 68. The Number of High-School Pupils Adding 20-29 Pairs of Numbers, 
30-39 Pairs, etc., in 60 Seconds. 



chapter xxii 

The Causes of Individual Differences: 

Sex and Race 

sex differences in ability 

The ability possessed by any individual in any mental 
trait is the result of (i) his original nature, (2) the extent 
to which his original tendencies have matured by mere inner 
growth, and (3) the circumstances of his life and training. 
His original nature is determined partly by sex, partly by his 
remote ancestry or race, partly by his near ancestry or family, 
and partly by the unknown causes of variation whereby children 
of the same parents receive differing inheritances. We have then 
to study the influence of sex, remote ancestry, near ancestry, 
maturity and environment. 

By way of preface to an account of sex differences it is well 
to note that their existence does not necessarily imply in any 
case the advisability of differences in school and home training, 
and, on the other hand, that even if the mental make-up of the 
sexes were identical it might still be wisest to educate them 
differently. /It is true that a difference of two groups in a 
mental trait will theoretically involve differences in treatment, 
but practical considerations apart from that of developing the 
highest efficiency in that trait may outweigh the advantages of 
the differential treatment/ For instance, consumptives theor- 

340 



THE INFLUENCE OF SEX 34 1 

etically need a different mode of life from people with healthy 
lungs, but it might in some cases be wiser to leave a consump- 
tive to his ordinary habits rather than to cause in him con- 
sciousness of his disease and worry concerning it. On the 
other hand, two boys might be identical in mental structure, 
yet their education might best be very different if we wished to 
make one of them a chemist and the other a psychologist. 

Let us note in the second place that the existence of differ- 
ences need not imply the need of different training, because 
those very differences may have been due to the different train- 
ing actually received and might never have appeared had train- 
ing been alike in the two classes. It is folly to argue from any 
mental condition in an individual or class without ascertaining 
whether it is due to original nature or to training. 

The chapter should properly be devoted exclusively to the 
differences necessarily produced by sex. Those produced by 
virtue of the adventitiously different training which boy and 
girl undergo belong in Chapter XXV. So far as may be, such 
a separation of differences due to sex-nature from those due to 
our traditional treatment of the sexes is in fact made. But in 
many cases where the amount of the difference that is to be 
credited to training is doubtful, the difference will be described 
in the present chapter, the discount to be made being left to the 
reader's judgment. 

An adequate comparison of men with women, or of boys 
with girls of the same age, requires that the two tables of 
distribution of surfaces of frequency for the two sexes in the 
ability in question be shown, as was done in Table 8 on 
P a g e 336 and as is done in Figure 69 (the dotted line 
being for girls). Such tables or surfaces show the whole fact, 
including the extent to which the two groups are alike or over- 
lap as well as the extent to which they differ. 



^4^ 



tNDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



r-i 



1 

1 * 

1 




--""! 


1 


... f 

^ r~-r— i .. 



'IH IS 21.26 etc. 

Fig. 69. The Number of A's Marked in 60 Seconds by 12-year-old Boys and by 
12-year-old Girls. The continuous line encloses the surface of frequency for 
boys; the dash-line encloses the surface of frequency for girls. 

The essence of any such pair of tables of distribution or 
surfaces of frequency may, however, be stated in a single quan- 
tity — the percentage of one group that reaches or exceeds the 
medium* of the other group. For example, if the two groups 
differ as shown in Fig. 70, the percentage of one group 




Fig. 70. The amount of difference between two groups when the per cent of one 
group reaching or exceeding the median of the other group is 45 or 55. 

reaching or exceeding the median ability of the other group is 
45 or 55. 45 per cent of the 'dotted line' surface lies to the 
right of the median of the 'heavy line' surface; and 55 per cent 
of the 'heavy line' surface lies to the right of the median of 
the 'dotted line' surface. If the two groups differ as shown 
in Fig. .71, the percentage of the 'dotted line' group reaching 
or exceeding the median ability of the 'heavy line' group is 40. 

* The median or median ability is the mid-ability, the poi^t on the 
scale in question which divides the groups in question into an upper and 
a lower half. 



THE INFLUENCE OF SEX 



343 



The reverse comparison gives 60 per cent. If the two groups 
differ as shown in Fig. 72, the percentage of » one group 
reaching or exceeding the median ability of the other is 25 or 
75. If the two groups differ as shown in Fig. 73, the per- 
centages are almost or quite o and 100. 




Fig. 71. The amount of difference between two groups when the per cent of one 
group reaching or exceeding the median of the other group is 40 or 60. 




Fig. 72. The amount of difference between two groups when the per cent of one 
group reaching or exceeding the median of the other group is 25 or 75. 

Conversely, when we are told that 60 per cent of men reach 
or exceed the median ability of women in a certain test of 
ingenuity, we may infer that the difference between men and 
women in this trait is approximately as shown in Fig. 71, 
the heavy line being taken to represent the men. If we are told 
that in industry only 28 per cent of men reach or exceed the 
median amount for women we may infer that the difference 
between men and women is nearly, but not quite, as great as 
that shown in Fig. y2, the dotted line being here taken to 



344 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 




THE INFLUENCE OF SEX 345 

represent the men. A single percentage then, when taken in 
connection with these diagrams, gives a serviceable comparison 
of the abilities of the two groups in the trait in question. 

I shall use such percentages in what follows. It will be re- 
membered that for practical purposes of school education an} 
percentage between 40 and 60 represents a very small differ^ 
ence with very great 'overlapping.' 

The percentages of males reaching or exceeding the median 
ability of females in such traits as have been subjected to exact 
investigation are roughly as follows : 
In speed of naming colors and sorting cards by color and 

discriminating colors as in a test for color blindness 24 
In finding and checking small visual details such as letters 33 
In spelling 33 

In school 'marks' in English 35 

In school 'marks' in foreign languages 40 

In memorizing for immediate recall 42 

In lowness of sensory thresholds 43 

In retentiveness 47 

In tests of speed and accuracy of association 48 

In tests of general information 50 

In school 'marks' in mathematics 50 

In school 'marks' (total average) 50 

In tests of discrimination (other than for color) 51 

In range of sensitivity 52 

In school 'marks' in history 55 

In tests of ingenuity 63 

In accuracy of arm movements 66 

In school marks in physics and chemistry 68 

In reaction time 70 

In speed of finger and arm movements 7/. 

The most important characteristic of these differences is 



346 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

their small amount. The individual differences within one sex 
so enormously outweigh the differences between the sexes in 
these intellectual and semi-intellectual traits that for practical 
purposes the sex difference may be disregarded. So far as 
ability goes, there could hardly be a stupider way to get two 
groups alike within each group but differing between the 
groups than to take the two sexes. As is well known, the 
experiments of the past generation in educating women have 
shown their equal competence in school work of elementary, 
secondary and collegiate grade. The present generation's ex- 
perience is showing the same fact for professional education 
and business service. The psychologists' measurements lead 
to the conclusion that this equality of achievement comes from 
an equality of natural gifts, not from an overstraining of the 
lesser talents of women. 



SEX DIFFERENCES IN TRAITS NOT MEASURED OBJECTIVELY 

We have now to turn from fairly satisfactory studies of sex 
differences in sensory, motor and intellectual capacities, to a 
looser discussion of the life of feeling, action and general 
achievement. Here objective and precise measurements will 
seldom be at our service. 

There are two studies which do report such differences 
quantitatively, but the data given are subject, unfortunately, to 
whatever errors of prejudice or custom teachers, physicians, and 
German women of intellectual interests make in rating indi- 
viduals, and to possibly important errors due to the existence in 
their minds of different standards for the two sexes. 

Karl Pearson ['04], in securing data on the resemblances 
of children of the same parents, had children rated by their 



THE INFLUENCE OF SEX 347 

teachers for various qualities — as quiet or noisy, shy or self- 
assertive, and the like. 

On calculating the probable percentages of boys reaching 
or exceeding the degree of each trait that is reached or exceeded 
by half of the girls, we have : — 

61% of boys are as athletic as or more athletic than the median 

girl. 
62% of boys are as noisy as or more noisy than the median girl. 
42% of boys are as shy as or more shy than the median girl. 
57% of boys are as self-conscious as or more self-conscious than 

the median girl. 
46% of boys are as popular as or more popular than the median 

girl. 
40% of boys are as conscientious as or more conscientious than 

the median girl. 
56% of boys are as quick-tempered as or more quick-tempered 

than the median girl. 
47% of boys are as intelligent as or more intelligent than the 

median girl. 
43% of boys write as well as or better than the median girl. 

Heymans and Wiersma ['06, '07 and '08] studied mental 
differences of the sexes by means of estimates of individuals 
made by other individuals who knew them more or less inti- 
mately. The report covered 90 topics, some of which included 
several traits. The individual was graded very coarsely — 
e. g., as emotional or not emotional; or as a drunkard, an 
habitual drinker, an occasional drinker, or a total abstainer. 
Such reports are, as has been noted, inferior evidence, since the 
person making them may use different standards for men and 
for women. Thus the same degree of emotionality might be 



348 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

called emotional in the case of a man and not emotional in the 
case of a woman, or vice versa. 

On the whole, the results of the ratings, though very 
inferior to objective measurements, are probably superior to 
the mere opinions which one could give from reflection on the 
common facts of life and his own narrow circle of acquaint- 
ances. They may at least serve to make the reader critical of 
whatever such opinions he has. 

I have therefore calculated from them the probable per 
cent of men reaching or exceeding the median woman in 
respect to each trait, counting the ratings by men and those by 
women as of equal weight. The differences so estimated I 
have arranged roughly in the order of their magnitude. The 
largest difference is that: — 

Only 15 per cent of men are as much more interested in persons than in 
things as the median woman is. 

The next largest differences are that : — - 

#n accurate and orderly reten- 
tion of what is read 73% of men equal or excel the median woman. 

In industry 28% " " " " " " 

In adroitness in manual work. 28% " " " " " * 
In love of sedentary games of 

skill 71% " " " " " " 

In emotionality 30%" " " " " " 

In temperance in the use of 

alcoholic drinks.... 30% (or less) " " " " " " 

In independence 70%" " « « « « « « 

In zeal for money making 69% " " " " " " " " 

In desire for change 32% " " " " " " " " 

In impulsiveness 34% " " " " " " " " 

^11 quickness of recovery from 

grief 66%" " " " fc ' " * * 



THE INFLUENCE OF SEX 349 

Then come the following: 

In activity (of the aimless 

sort) 36% of men equal or excel the median woman, 

In dissatisfaction with oneself. 36% " " " " " " 

In religiousness 36%" " " " " " " " 

In excitability 37%" " " " " " 

In sympathy 38% " " " " " " 

In patience 38%" " " " " " 

In love of sports 62%" " " " " " 

In humor 61% " " " " " " 

In risibility 39% " " " " " " 

In talkativeness 40% " " " " " " 

In gaiety 40%" " " " " " " " 

In vanity of person 40% 



it « 



There are very slight differences as follows : men are a little 
oftener reported as critical, attached to opinions once formed, 
given to ambitious plans, given to contradiction, sensible, 
decisive, gifted in mathematics, gifted in literature, specific, of 
good memories, fond of eating and drinking, fond of distinc- 
tion, strict, and also easy-going, in discipline with children, 
kind to subordinates, widely read, and punctual. They are a 
little less often reported as good-natured, anxious, easily 
reconciled after anger, insistent on immediate results, good 
judges of human nature, practically resourceful, narrow, gifted 
in languages, gifted in music, good observers, thrifty, domin- 
eering, kind and careful in discipline with children, active in 
philanthropic work, demonstrative, honest about money, fond 
of intercourse with social superiors, timid, well posted about 
the affairs of acquaintances, polite, attentive, tidy, and courag- 
eous in sickness. 

In the following traits there is still less difference reported 
or no difference observable : Trustfulness, tolerance, incon- 
stancy in sympathies, devotion to old memories, quickness in 
comprehension, superficiality, stupidity, ability in drawing, 



350 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

acting, mimicing, ear for music, patriotism, naturalness, 
straightforwardness, truthfulness, kindness to animals, snob- 
bishness, courage, and pleasure-seeking. 

It would be desirable in any such study that the sex differ- 
ences in the instinctive acts, interests, aversions and emotional 
responses should be studied apart from the differences in similar 
traits that have been produced by circumstances. Two instincts 
are worthy of special attention. The most striking difference 
in instinctive equipment consists in the strength of the fighting 
instinct in the male and of the nursing instinct in the female. 
No one will doubt that men are more possessed by the instinct 
to fight, to be the winner in games and serious contests, than 
are women; nor that women are more possessed than men by 
the instinct to nurse, to care for and fuss over others, to relieve, 
comfort and console. And probably no serious student of 
human nature will doubt that these are matters of original 
nature. The out-and-out physical fighting for the sake of 
combat is pre-eminently a male instinct and the resentment at 
mastery, the zeal to surpass and the general joy at activity in 
mental as well as physical matters seem to be closely correlated 
with it. It has been common to talk of women's "dependence." 
This is, I am sure, only an awkward name for less resentment 
at mastery. The actual nursing of the young seems likewise 
to involve equally unreasoning tendencies to pet, coddle, and 
"do for" others. The existence of these two instincts has been 
long recognized by literature and common knowledge, but their 
importance in causing differences in the general activities of the 
sexes has not. The fighting instinct is in fact the cause of a 
very large amount of the world's intellectual endeavor. The 
financier does not think merely for money nor the scientist for 
truth nor the theologian to save souls. Their intellectual efforts 
are aimed in great measure to outdo the other man, to subdue 



THE INFLUENCE OF RACE 351 

nature, to conquer assent. The maternal instinct in its turn is 
the chief source of woman's superiorities in the moral life. The 
virtues in which she excels are not so much due to either any 
general moral superiority or any set of special moral talents 
as to her original impulses to relieve, comfort and console. 



A SAMPLE STUDY OF RACIAL DIFFERENCES 

Mayo ['13] secured the academic records of 150 negroes* 
who entered the high schools of New York City since 1902. 
For each such record he got a white pupil'sf record selected 
under the same conditions. It is impossible to tell exactly 
whether and how far the two groups of pupils thus taken repre- 
sent dissimilar samplings of the two total groups, negroes and 
whites in New York City. In my opinion the samplings are 
closely similar. There are no measurements of the extent to 
which residence in New York selects the more scholarly of 
negroes from the country, or of the extent to which entrance to 
high school selects differently from the negroes in New York 
than from the whites. In general, selection by entrance to the 
public high schools is narrow but democratic; and in Mr. 
Mayo's opinion and my own the high school gets a somewhat, 
but not much, higher selection from the colored than from the 
white youth. That is, in our opinion, the superiority of the 
colored in high school to the colored outside is greater, but not 
much greater, than the superiority of the whites in high school 
to the whites outside. 

*A negro being defined as an individual reported as a negro by school 
officers. Mnlattoes are of course frequent. 

t A white pupil being defined as an individual reported as such by school 
officers. There may in rare cases have been some slight mixture of negro 
blood. 



352 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



Whatever be the difference in the selection of the two 
groups, colored beginners in high schools in New York City 
differ from whites in their careers there as follows : 
(i) On the average they are seven months older, only 36 per 

cent of them being as young as the median white, 
(2) They continue in the high school longer. 



in 



m 



Jl 



H-J 



Lr 



2a 



1 

40 




sSk 



60 80 

tfiG. 74. Comparison of White Pupils (continuous line) and Colored Pupils 
(dotted line) in respect to Scholarship in the High School. The horizontal scale 
is for the median of all marks obtained by an individual except those obtained 
in courses repeated because of failure. The marks in these schools are on 
a o — ■ 100 scale. 

(3) In achievement in the different studies they are somewhat, 

but not very much, inferior. The general tendency 
is for only three-tenths of them to reach, the median 
record for whites. 

(4) The difference is greatest in the case of English, in which 

only 24 per cent of the colored pupils reach or exceed 
the median for whites. 
Fig. 74 presents Dr. Mayo's results in the case of general 
scholarship. 



THE INFLUENCE OF RACE 



353 



The greatest difference between races so far found is that 
between European whites and Negritos in a simple test of 
intellect. The facts are shown in Figs. 75 and 76. In 
general, differences between races in original capacities are 
small in comparison with the range of differences within either 
race, and the amount of overlapping is great. 






15 



J50 



--1 



15 30 45 60 76 90 105 

Fig. 75 (upper diagram). Comparison of whites (continuous lines) and Negritos 
(dotted lines) in respect to time taken to put variously shaped blocks in holes 
to match. The horizontal scale is for time in seconds, first trial. 

Vig. ?6 (lower diagram). As in Fig. 75, except that the records in the third 

trial were used. 



23 



chapter xxiii 

The Influence of Immediate Ancestry or Family 

The problem naturally resolves itself into two, — the meas- 
urement of the resemblance of individuals of like ancestry and 
the subtraction of a proper allowance for their likeness in 
training. Or, more exactly, we have to measure the amount 
by which the likeness of individuals of like ancestry surpasses 
the likeness of individuals of different ancestry, and subtract 
from it the amount due to their greater likeness in training than 
that found in the case of individuals of different ancestry. 
Measurements of the greater differences of wwrelated individuals 
with an allowance for the greater differences in their training 
would serve the same end. But the effect of differences in 
ancestry in producing differences in intellect and character is 
more easily measured by the effect of similarity or identity in 
ancestry in decreasing such differences. The facts to be con- 
sidered are then measurements of resemblance and allowance 
for like training. 

THE VARIABILITY OF INDIVIDUALS OF THE SAME SEX AND 

ANCESTRY 

Resemblance, not repetition, is to be measured. To say 
that a man's original nature depends upon his ancestry does not 
mean that it is an exact facsimile of any one or any combination 
of his ancestors. There is no reason to believe that four sons 

354 



THE INFLUENCE OF NEAR ANCESTRY 355 

of the same parents and consequently of the same total ancestry 
will have the same original natures. Indeed we know they will 
not, save by chance. For twins who have presumably in some 
cases identical or nearly identical antenatal influences and 
nurture may vary widely in both physical and mental traits. 
What ancestry does is to reduce the variability of the offspring 
and determine the point about which they do vary. 

Take, for instance, the capacity to form intelligent habits 
or associations amongst sense impressions, ideas and acts. The 
number of associations between situation and act, the number, 
that is, of things an animal can do in response to the multitude 
of conditions of life, varies tremendously throughout the animal 
kingdom. The free swimming protozoa studied by Professor 
Jennings had in addition to the common physiological functions 
hardly more than a single habit. The sum of the life of Para- 
moecium is to eat, breathe, digest, form tissues, excrete, repro- 
duce, move along in a steady way, and when passing from 
certain media into others to stop, back, turn to the aboral side 
and move along again as before. At the other extreme is a 
cultivated human being whose toilet, table manners, games, 
speech, reading, business, etc., involve hundreds of thousands 
of associative habits. 

If now we take a thousand descendants of human beings 
and count up the number of associative habits displayed by 
each we shall of course find a great variability. Some of our 
thousand human offspring will learn fewer things than some 
dogs and cats. Some of them may learn many more than uny 
of the parents from whom they sprang. But on the whole the 
offspring of human beings will vary about the human average 
instead of about the general animal average, and the average 
deviation of the human group will be far less than that of the 
whole animal kingdom. 



356 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES, 

To illustrate again, the children of parents who are, say, 
3 inches above the average of the general population in stature 
will vary not about the general average, but about a point 2 
inches above it; and will differ one from another only about 
ten seventeenths as much as one adult of the general population 
differs from another.* 

Immediate ancestry will then, when influential, cause chil- 
dren to deviate from the general average toward the condition 
of their parents and to vary less among themselves than would 
the same number of unrelated individuals. 

It might seem at first sight that two individuals of the same 
sex, race and parentage, two brothers or two sisters, should, if 
ancestry counted at all, have identical original natures and differ 
only in as far as different environmental forces affect them. 
Common observation shows this to be false, but common think- 
ing does not always or often understand that it is false just 
because immediate ancestry does count. If ancestry did not 
count, either all men would by original nature be identical, or 
the variations among them would all be miracles. If ancestry 
did not count, two brothers might well be identical in original 
nature, for all human males might be. But if ancestry is a 
force, it is certainly a variable one, the germs produced by any 
one parent being somewhat different among themselves for the 
same reason that the germs produced by all parents together 
vary still more. If the germs differ at all, the differences are 
likely to be less amongst the germs of any one human being 
than amongst an equal number from all men, but the differ- 
ences are not at all likely to be reduced to zero. 

In all thought of inheritance, physical or mental, one should 
always remember that children spring, not from their parents' 

*This illustration is based on the data reported by Galton in Natural 
Inheritance. 



THE INFLUENCE OF NEAR ANCESTRY 357 

bodies and minds, but from the germs of those parents. The 
qualities of the germs of a man are what we should know in 
order to prophesy directly the traits of his children. One 
quality these germs surely possess. They are variable. Dis- 
carding syntax and elegance for emphasis, we may say that the 
germs of a six-foot man include some six-feet germs, some 
six-feet-one germs, some six-feet-two, some five-feet-eleven, 
some five-feet-ten, etc. Each human being gives to the future, 
not himself, but a variable group of germs. This hypothesis 
of the variability of the germs explains the fact that short par- 
ents may have tall sons; gifted parents, stupid sons; the same 
parents, unlike sons. We have to measure the amount of 
resemblance, not the frequency of identity. 

The amount of resemblance between a thousand fathers 
and sons, pair by pair (or mothers and sons, or brothers and 
sisters, or uncles and nephews), is best measured by a so-called 
coefficient of resemblance or coefficient of correlation. This is a 
quantity varying from i.oo (which means identity or perfect 
resemblance in the trait in question), through o (which means 
no more resemblance than any one person taken at random 
bears to any other one person of the same age and sex taken at 
random), to -i.oo (which means the likeness, or rather the 
unlikeness, that would be found if the two thousand individuals 
were so paired as to have within the pairs the least possible 
resemblance) . 

MEASUREMENTS OF RESEMBLANCE IN RELATED INDIVIDUALS 

Before describing the similarities of closely related individ- 
uals in mental traits I shall present the results of studies in the 
case of some physical traits which will prove that heredity is a 
vera causa, since, in them, similarity of training is out of the 
question as a cause of the similarities found. 



358 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

The coefficient of correlation between brothers in the color 
of the eyes is, according to Pearson, .52. But parents could 
not, if they would, exert any environmental influence upon 
the color of their children's eyes. The fraternal resemblance 
must be due to the resemblance in ancestry. 

In height Pearson finds the coefficient of correlation between 
father and son to be .3, and that between brother and brother 
to be .5. In other words, a son, on the average, deviates from 
the general trend of the population by .3 the amount of his 
father's deviation, a brother by .5 the amount of his brother's. 
Now no one can imagine that tall fathers try especially to make 
their sons tall. Nor will the class 'men two inches above the 
average height' feed their children any more than men one 
inch above it. 

The coefficient of fraternal correlation in the case of the 
cephalic index (ratio of width to length of head) is, according 
to Pearson, .49. Here it is utterly incredible that fathers do 
anything to their children that would tend to produce in them 
similar indices. 

Finally take color of hair. Fraternal correlation is, ac- 
cording to Pearson, .55. Here again home influence could not 
cause one whit of the resemblance. 

Immediate ancestry can and does, apart from any other 
force, cause in whole or in part the abmodality, or deviation 
from the C. T. of his race, of an individual in the case of stature, 
cephalic index and eye color. There is no reason to suppose 
that the brain is less influenced by ancestry than are the tissues 
that cause height, or the shape of the skull bones that causes 
cephalic index, or the deposits of pigment that cause eye color. 
Immediate ancestry is thus a probable cause for original mental 
nature. And when there is doubt as to the choice between 
it and the environment as the cause of differences in mental 



THE INFLUENCE OF NEAR ANCESTRY 359 

traits of individuals at any age, it must not be forgotten that 
the influence of the latter is, after all, largely a matter of spec- 
ulation, while the influence of ancestry is in physical traits a 
demonstrated fact. 

Deafness may be considered a, physical trait because it is 
due to physical causes, but so are all mental traits. The real 
difference is that we know more about the causes in the one 
case than in the others. The manifestation and results of deaf- 
ness are certainly mental traits. 

The brother or sister of a person born deaf is found to be 
deaf in 245 cases out of 1,000, almost one case out of four. 
The number of deaf persons amongst 1,000 brothers and sis- 
ters of hearing individuals is not known exactly, but it is cer- 
tainly less than 1, probably much less. That is, a person of 
the same ancestry as a congenitally deaf person is at least 245 
(probably many more) times as likely to be deaf as a person 
of the same ancestry as a hearing person. The child of two 
parents both of whom were born deaf is at least 259 (probably 
many more) times as likely to be deaf as the child of two 
hearing parents [Fay, '98, p. 49]. In this case, as with the 
physical traits described, there is no reason to impute any 
efficacy to training. Parents born deaf would take pains to 
prevent deafness in their children. 

Mr. E. L. Earle ['03] measured the spelling abilities of 
some 600 children in the St. Xavier school in New York by 
careful tests. As the children in this school commonly enter 
at a very early age, and as the staff and methods of teaching 
remain very constant, we have in the case of the 180 pairs of 
brothers and sisters included in the 600 children closely similar 
school training. Mr. Earle measured the ability of any indi- 
vidual by his deviation from the average for his grade and sex 
and found the coefficient of correlation between children of the 



360 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

same family to be .50. That is, any individual is on the aver- 
age 50 per cent as much above or below the average for his age 
and sex as his brother or sister. 

Similarities in home training might theoretically account 
for this, but any one experienced in teaching will hesitate to 
attribute much efficacy to such similarities. Bad spellers 
remain bad spellers though their teachers change. Moreover, 
Dr. J. M. Rice in his exhaustive study of spelling ability ['97] 
found little or no relationship between good spelling and any 
one of the popular methods, and little or none between poor 
spelling and foreign parentage. Yet the training of a home 
where the parents do not read or spell the language well must 
be a home of relatively poor training for spelling. Cornman's 
more careful study of spelling ['01] supports the view that 
ability to spell is little influenced by such differences in school 
or home training as commonly exist. 

These facts make it almost certain that immediate ancestry 
does count somewhat in producing the likenesses and differ- 
ences found amongst men in mental traits. In the measure- 
ments now to be reported, the influence of family training 
enters as a more probable alternative cause of the resemblance. 
I shall in each case give the measurement of resemblance made 
and the allowance for likeness in home training suggested by 
the author. 

The first serious study of the inheritance of mental traits 
was made in the 6o's by Francis Galton and reported in 
Hereditary Genius ['69, '92]. He examined carefully the 
careers of the relatives of 977 men each of whom would rank 
as one man in four thousand for eminent intellectual gifts. 
They had relatives of that degree of eminence as follows : — • 
fathers 89, brothers 114, sons 129, all three together 332: 
grandfathers 52, grandsons 37, uncles 53, nephews 61, all four 



THE INFLUENCE OF NEAR ANCESTRY 361 

together 203. The probable numbers of relatives of that degree 
of eminence for 977 average men are as follows : — fathers, 
brothers, and sons together, 1 ; grandfathers, grandsons, uncles 
and nephews all together, 3. Galton argues that the training 
due to the possession of eminent relatives can not have been the 
cause of this superior chance of eminence in the relatives of 
gifted literary men and artists. 

He says : "To recapitulate : I have endeavored to show in 
respect to literary and artistic eminence — 

1. That men who are gifted with high abilities — even men 
of class E — easily rise through all the obstacles caused by 
inferiority of social rank. 

2. Countries where there are fewer hindrances than in 
England, to a poor man rising in life, produce a much larger 
proportion of persons of culture, but not of what I call eminent 
men. (England and America are taken as illustration.) 

3. Men who are largely aided by social advantages are 
unable to achieve eminence, unless they are endowed with high 
natural gifts." 

Galton demonstrates that the adopted sons of popes do not 
approach equality in eminence with the real sons of gifted men. 
He so orders his studies of men eminent in other fields as to 
leave very slight basis for one who argues that training and 
opportunity rather than birth caused the eminence attained. 
Finally, Galton's own opinion, that of an eminently fair scien- 
tific man based upon an extensive study of individual bio- 
graphies, may safely be taken with a very slight discount. He 
says : — "I feel convinced that no man can achieve a very high 
reputation without being gifted with very high abilities." 

Dr. Frederick Adams Woods has reported in Mental and 
Moral Heredity in Royalty ['06], a work which appeared first 
in the Popular Science Monthly in 1902 and 1903, measure- 



$62 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

ments of the resemblances in intellect and in morals of many 
individuals chosen from the royal families of Europe. Dr. 
Woods gave to each person of the 671 studied a rating from 
1 to 10 on a scale for intellect — 1 representing feeble-minded- 
ness or imbecility; 10 such gifts as those of William the Silent, 
Frederick the Great and Gustavus Adolphus; and 2, 3, 4, 5, 
etc., steps at equal intervals between, in his opinion. These 
ratings represented Dr. Woods' impressions from reading the 
statements of historians and biographers about these individ- 
uals. He gave similar ratings for morality. 

The ratings assigned by Dr. Woods are, of course, not ac- 
curate. No one man's ratings of nearly seven hundred his- 
torical personages could be. The effect of this chance inaccu- 
racy would be to make all his measurements of resemblance 
lower than the real resemblance. He may also have erred from 
an unconscious prejudice by rating as too much alike individ- 
uals who were closely related. This error would tend obviously 
to make his estimate of resemblance too high. His ratings are 
given in full and so far nobody has proved or even suggested 
that they are thus biased. 

There is still another chance for error. The reputation of 
a prince may be a peculiarly unfair measure of his ability. A 
son whose gifted father has brought the nation's affairs into a 
prosperous condition may thereby get, in histories and biog- 
raphies, an unduly high rating ; whereas a son who must strive 
against the unfavorable conditions produced by a stupid father, 
may thereby incur an undeserved repute of inefficiency. This 
is, however, no more plausible a supposition than the opposite 
one that a moderately gifted son would be rated too low by 
contrast with a gifted father and too high if his predecessor 
had been a marked failure. On the whole Dr. Woods' ratings 
seem little subject to error other than chance inaccuracy, so that 



THE INFLUENCE OF NEAR ANCESTRY 363 

the resemblances calculated from them are probably too low 
rather than too high. 

The general tendency to resemblance he finds to be : — 
In intellect : — 

Offspring and fathers, ^=.30;* 

Offspring and grandfathers, r=.i6; 

Offspring and greatgrandfathers, r—.i$ 
In morals : — 

Offspring and fathers, ^=.30 

Offspring and grandfathers, r= .175 

Dr. Woods thinks that little or no allowance need be made 
for greater similarity of environment for son and father or 
grandfather than existed for sons of royal families in general. 
He says that, while educational opportunities have been unequal, 
the "advantages and hindrances must have always been of an 
accidental character, depending on various causes, and their 
distribution would occur largely at haphazard throughout the 
entire number of collected persons (832): and could not ac- 
count for the great group of mediocrity and inferiority, like 
the houses of Hanover, Denmark, Mecklenburg, and latter 
Spain, Portugal and France." ['06, p. 284.] 

So also the advantages of high military or political office 
have been, in his opinion, distributed "at random throughout 
the entire number and could not produce the grouping by close 
blood relationship found throughout this entire study." ['06, p. 

285.] 

He tests one environmental influence by the facts, namely, 
the advantage of succession to the throne. 

"There is one peculiar way in which a little more than half 
of all the males have had a considerable advantage over the 

* r is used as a symbol for the coefficient of correlation or resemblance. 



364 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

others in gaining distinction as important historical characters. 
The eldest sons, or if not the eldest, those sons to whom the 
succession has devolved, have undoubtedly had greater oppor- 
tunities to become illustrious than those to whom the succession 
did not fall by right of primogeniture. I think every one must 
feel that perhaps much of the greatness of Frederick II, of 
Prussia, Gustavus Adolphus, and William the Silent, was due 
to their official position; but an actual mathematical count is 
entirely opposed to this view. The inheritors of the succession 
are no more plentiful in the higher grades than in the lower. 
The figures below show the number in each grade who came 
into power by inheriting the throne. 

Grades 123456789 10 

Total number in each Grade 7 21 41 49 71 70 68 43 18 7 

Succession Inheritors 5 14 26 31 49 38 45 23 12 4 

Per cent 71 67 63 64 69 54 67 54 67 57 

It is thus seen that from 54 to 71 per cent inherited the suc- 
cession in the different grades. The upper grades are in no 
way composed of men whose opportunities were enhanced by 
virtue of this high position. Thus we see that a certain very 
decided difference in outward circumstances — namely, the right 
of succession — can be proved to have no effect on intellectual 
distinction, or at least so small as to be immeasurable without 
much greater data. The younger sons have made neither a 
poorer nor a better showing." ['06, pp. 285-286.] 

His conclusion is : — "The upshot of it all is, that as regards 
intellectual life, environment is a totally inadequate explanation. 
If it explains certain characters in certain instances, it always 
fails to explain as many more ; while heredity not only explains 
all (or at least 90 per cent) of the intellectual side of character 
in practically every instance, but does so best when questions of 
environment are left out of the discussion. Therefore, it would 
seem that we are forced to the conclusion that all these rough 
differences in intellectual activity which are susceptible of grad- 
ing on a scale of ten are due to predetermined differences in the 
primary germ-cells." ['06, p. 286.] 



THE INFLUENCE OF NEAR ANCESTRY 365 

In 1905 the author published a report [Thorndike, '05] of 
measurements of the resemblances of fifty pairs of twins in 
marking A's on a printed page of capital letters (A test), mark- 
ing words containing certain combinations of letters (a-t and 
r-e), marking misspelled words on a sheet containing 100 
words (misspelled word test), addition, multiplication and 
writing the opposites of a set of words. I quote or summarize 
the essential facts. 

The resemblances of twins, resemblance meaning any 
greater likeness than would be found in a pair of children of 
the same age and sex picked at random from the school popu- 
lation of New York City, are : — 

In the A test R = .69 

In the a-t and r-e tests R = .71 

In the misspelled word test R = .80+ 
In addition R = .75 

In multiplication R = .84 

In the opposites test R = .90 

If now these resemblances are due to the fact that the two 
members of any twin pair are treated alike at home, have the 
same parental models, attend the same school and are subject 
in general to closely similar environmental conditions, then ( 1 ) 
twins should, up to the age of leaving home, grow more and 
more alike, and in our measurements the twins 13 and 14 
years old should be much more alike than those 9 and 10 years 
old. Again, (2) if similarity in training is the cause of sim- 
ilarity in mental traits, ordinary fraternal pairs not over four 
or five years apart in age should show a resemblance somewhat 
nearly as great as twin pairs, for the home and school condi- 
tions of a pair of the former will not be much less similar than 
those of a pair of the latter. Again, (3) if training is the 
cause, twins should show greater resemblance in the case of 



366 . INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

traits much subject to training, such as ability in addition or in 
multiplication, than in traits less subject to training, such as 
quickness in marking off the A's on a sheet of printed capitals, 
or in writing the opposites of words. 

On the other hand, ( i ) the nearer the resemblance of young 
twins comes to equaling that of old, (2) the greater the supe- 
riority of twin resemblance to ordinary fraternal resemblance 
is, and (3) the nearer twin resemblance in relatively untrained 
capacities comes to equaling that in capacities at which the 
home and school direct their attention, the more must the 
resemblances found be attributed to inborn traits. 

The older twins show no closer resemblance than the 
younger twins, and the chances are surely four to one that with 
an infinite number of twins tested the 12-14-year-olds would 
not show a resemblance .15 greater than the 9-1 1 -year-olds. 
The facts are : — 

The Resemblances of Young and Old Twins Compared 

Twins 9-1 1 Twins 12-14 



1) A test 


66 


73 


2) a-t and r-e tests 


81 


62 


3) Misspelled word test 


7 6 


74 


4) Addition 


90 


54 


5) Multiplication 


9i 


69 


6) Opposites 


96 


88 


Averages 


83 


70 



I have measured the resemblances between siblings (chil- 
dren of the same parents) a few years apart in age only im- 
perfectly, and only in the A test, a-t test and opposites tests. 
The resemblances are between .3 and .4, or less than half the 
resemblance found for twins. 

The variations in the closeness of resemblance of the twins 



THE INFLUENCE OF NEAR ANCESTRY 367 

hi the different traits show little, and possibly no, direct correla- 
tion with the amount of opportunity for environmental influ- 
ences. The traits most subject to training (addition and mul- 
tiplication) do show closer resemblances than the traits least 
subject to training (the A, a-t and r-e test) ; but on the other 
hand show less close resemblances than the traits moderately 
subject to training (the misspelled word test and opposites test). 

The facts then are easily, simply and completely explained 
by one simple hypothesis : namely, that the natures of the germ 
cells — the conditions of conception — cause whatever similarities 
and differences exist in the original natures of men, that these 
conditions influence body and mind equally, and that in life the 
differences in modification of body and mind produced by such 
differences as obtain between the environments of present-day 
New York City public school children are slight. 

We must be careful, however, not to confuse two totally 
different things : ( i ) the power of the environment, — for in- 
stance, of schools, laws, books and social ideals, — to produce 
differences in the relative achievements of men, and (2) the 
power of the environment to produce differences in absolute 
achievement. It has been shown that the relative differences 
in certain mental traits which were found in these one hundred 
children are due almost entirely to differences in ancestry, not 
in training; but this does not in the least deny that better 
methods of training might improve all their achievements fifty 
per cent or that the absence of training, say, in spelling and 
arithmetic, might decrease the corresponding achievements to 
zero. 

The argument is limited entirely to the causes which make 
one person differ from another in mental achievements under 
the same general conditions of life at the beginning of the 
twentieth century in New York City as pupils in its school sys~ 



368 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

tern. If the resemblance of twins has been measured in the 
case of a group made up partly of New York City school chil- 
dren and partly of children of equal capacity brought up in the 
wilds of Africa, the variability of the group in addition and 
multiplication would have increased and the correlation coeffi- 
cients would rise. They would then measure the influence of 
original nature plus the now much increased influence of the 
environment. 



chapter xxiv 
The Influence of Maturity 

No competent student doubts that in certain mental traits 
maturity or inner mental growth causes one individual to differ 
year by year from his former self, irrespective of all training. 
The same force necessarily accounts for some of the differences 
found between children of different degrees of mental maturity. 
If by a miracle a hundred children could be found who were 
alike in sex, ancestry and training, but who were divided into 
two groups by a difference in the extent to which the original 
impetus to mental development had run its course, the groups 
would differ, in at least certain traits, in accordance with this 
difference in stage of growth or maturity. 

About the magnitude of the influence of maturity there is, 
however, a wide range of opinion, from that which would 
expect children in the same stage of growth to be all closely 
alike and all very different from children in a later stage of 
growth, regardless of differences in their ancestry and training, 
to that which would expect children of the same ancestry and 
training to be all very much alike, regardless of differences in 
stage of growth. 

The study of the facts is made difficult by the absence of any 
exact measure of maturity, that is, of the extent to which the 
original impetus to mental development has run its course. 
Length of life is the measure which has been used, but chrono- 
logical age is not identical with physiological maturity and 

«4 369 



370 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

neither of these two is identical with mental maturity. An 
individual's degree of mental maturity cannot be inferred from 
his age. On the average, however, sixteen-year-olds will 
differ from six-year-olds because of the effect of ten years of 
inner growth plus the effect of the average amount of training 
that accompanies that growth. And if we could separate out 
the effect of mere growth from within from the effect of the 
training that accompanies it, we could measure each of the two. 
Such separation is, however, well-nigh impossible with present 
knowledge. 

Consider, for example, the facts given by Gilbert for the 
ability of ten-year-old boys and seventeen-year-old boys in dis- 
criminating weights. The median error made by the ten-year- 
olds was 8.6 grams; the median error made by the seventeen- 
year-olds was 6.0 grams. Just what can be inferred about 
maturity's effect upon the power to discriminate weights from 
these measurements? 

It is clear that an alteration in any mental trait in any 
individual with age might be due to the mere maturing of some 
characteristic of original nature or might be the creation of 
some environmental force. The educational inferences would 
be exactly opposite in the two cases. In the former we should 
say : This change comes as a gift from nature which we may 
not be able to refuse without damaging general growth. It is 
given as the partial basis and starting point for education. We 
do not have to try to get it. In the latter case we should say : 
This change comes as the earnings of training. It is a product 
of education. With a different training it might be absent. 
We may lack or possess it as we choose. 

Moreover, in the case of many measurements of mental 
traits, for instance those quoted, the change due to an individ- 
ual's age would be possibly due not only to the maturing of the 



THE INFLUENCE OF MATURITY 37 1 

trait or the influence of training upon it, but also to the influence 
of both maturity and training upon the ability to understand 
and the wish to follow instructions and the ambition to do well 
in tests. 

As a matter of fact all three of these factors are involved in 
most of the changes of mental traits with age. Even if the 
changes are due directly to outside forces, in the form of the 
experiences of life and training, maturity may still count as a 
force co-operating with these or furnishing the conditions in 
the individual which permit their action on him to produce the 
mental changes in question. On the other hand, mere inner 
growth, no matter how potent, requires usually some stimuli 
from without. A child grows mentally in some kind of a 
world of experience, forming some habits. Only in thought 
can the contribution of his inner impulsions be separated off 
from the contribution of the outside stimuli by which the inner 
impulsions are roused to action. Furthermore, a mental test 
with children almost always measures somewhat general 
powers of comprehension as well as the special power of sensa- 
tion, memory or the like that is its ostensible object. 

So far upon the supposition that by changes in mental 
traits with age, we mean changes in the same individual 
measured at different ages. The average change would then 
be the average of the changes in all the individuals studied. 
But in the studies that have been reported, the difference 
between the figures for, say, ten and eleven years, is not the 
average of the changes of all the individuals studied and need 
not in any real way describe them. 

For ( i ) the difference between the average of a group at 
ten and of the same group at eleven years does not describe the 
real individual changes; and (2) when we measure ten-and 
eleven-year-olds as we find them in school or elsewhere, we 



5/ 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



can not be sure that the eleven-year-olds represent what the 
ten-year-olds will become. 

The first point will be made clear by the following illustra- 
tion. Suppose that eighteen boys showed at the age of ten and 
a half years the abilities in some mental trait denoted by the 
measures in the first column and made the gains during the 
next year shown by the figures in the second column, their con- 
sequent records at eleven and a half years being given in the 
third column. (Case i.) 

Case i Case 2 



Ability 




Ability 


Ability 




Ability 


at ioy 2 


Change 


at iiy 2 


at ioy 2 


Change 


at 11V2 


2 


5 


7 


2 





2 


2 


5 


7 


2 





2 


3 


4 


7 


3 


1 


4 


4 


3 


7 


4 





4 


4 


4 


8 


4 


1 


5 


5 


4 


9 


5 


.3 


8 


5 


1 


6 


5 


1 


6 


6 


3 


9 


6 


1 


7 


6 


3 


9 


6 


1 


7 


6 


1 


7 


6 


3 


9 


6 


1 


7 


6 


3 


9 


7 


1 


8 


7 


1 


8 


7 


3 


10 


7 


4 


11 


7 


1 


8 


7 


4 


11 


8 





8 


8 


3 


11 


9 


1 


10 


9 


4 


13 


9 





9 


9 


5 


14 


11 





11 


11 


5 


16 


Avg. 5.94 


2.22 


8.16 


Avg. 5.94 


2.22 


8.16 



If instead of this complete record we had simply the figures : 
ioy 2 years, Av. 5.94; ny 2 years, Av. 8.16; Change in average 
ability, 2.22, we should lack the essential features of our fact ; 
viz., (1) the variability of the changes and (2) the antagonism 
between ability at ten and a half years and growth during the 



THE INFLUENCE OF MATURITY 373 

next year. There is an almost inevitable tendency, when a 
single figure is given to represent change, to fancy that all chil- 
dren show exactly or nearly that amount of change. This is 
of course never true. Rate of change as well as absolute ability 
is variable. And it is precisely in relating the different degrees 
of progress found in individuals to their original capacities and 
individual circumstances, that educational insight will accrue. 
The real individual changes may often prove to be a partial 
function of the amount of ability already acquired, as in our 
illustration. The mere change in average ability given above 
could have come as well from a condition, shown in Case 2, 
just opposite in this respect to that of Case 1. 

Our second point was that the eleven-year-olds tested need 
not represent what the ten-year-olds would become. The 
average changes stated in the quotations at the beginning of 
this chapter were obtained from facts like the following : Ten- 
year-olds A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, etc., give an average x; 
eleven-year-olds, L, M, N, 0, P , etc., give an average y. The 
change in average ability is y - x. The individuals of the two 
groups not being identical, the chance is given for the fallacy 
of selection to run riot. The eleven-twelve-year-olds certainly 
represent only those ten-eleven-year-olds who will live ; in any 
test given in schools they represent only the ten-eleven-year-olds 
who will continue in that type of school. Now if one measures 
a mental trait in elementary school children he gets for differ- 
ent ages something like the following figures: — 12-year-olds, 
100; 13-year-olds, 90; 14-year-olds, 70; 15-year-olds, 30. 

Nobody can imagine that the fifteen-year-olds here would 
give anything like a fair sampling of what the twelve-year-olds 
would become. The brightest twelve-year-olds pass out of the 
grammar school before they are fifteen. Some mental defec- 
tives leave for special institutions. Some moral defectives 



374 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

leave for reform schools or the free life of thievery and tramp- 
dom. Some children leave school to go to work. If we fill 
up our quota of fifteen-year-olds by adding 70 from high 
school pupils we jump from the frying pan into the fire, for 
these are a selection of the brighter, the more ambitious, and 
the more intellectually inclined. 

I conclude, therefore, that the development of mental traits 
with age has not been and can not be adequately measured by 
such studies as those quoted. To measure it we must repeat 
measurements upon the same individuals and for all purposes 
of inference preserve intact each of the individual changes. In 
connection with each of them account must be taken of the 
training which the individual in question has undergone. 

What measurements we do have may serve, however, to 
correct two errors of common opinion. The notion that the 
increases in ability due to a given amount of progress toward 
maturity are closely alike for all children save the so-called 
"abnormally precocious" or "retarded" is false. The same 
fraction of the total inner development, from zero to adult 
ability, will produce very unequal results in different children. 
Inner growth acts differentially according to the original nature 
that is growing. 

The notion that maturity is the main factor in the differ- 
ences found amongst school children, so that grading and 
methods of teaching should be fitted closely to 'stage of growth/ 
is also false. It is by no means very hard to find seven-year- 
olds who can do intellectual work at which one in twenty 
seventeen-year-olds would fail. Although the influence of 
inner growth in causing individual differences cannot be 
measured from the data at hand, an upper limit for it can be 
set. Take discrimination of weight as a sample case. Since 
early age differences are in part due to training and since train- 



THE INFLUENCE OF MATURITY 



375 



ing acts here in the same direction as does maturity, the average 
inner growth from, say, ten to seventeen must produce less than 
the average difference found between ten-year-olds and seven- 
teen-year-olds. Since, in Gilbert's study, the seventeen-year- 
olds and ten-year-olds both come from school pupils, including 
pupils in the high school, the seventeen-year-olds represent at 
least as high ranking pupils in mental respects as the ten-year- 
olds would become. So the effect of average inner growth 






S 8.6 

Fig. 77. ^ The Magnitude of Age Differences in Comparison with Range for 
Individuals of the Same Age. This drawing is imaginary, for Gilbert does 
not give the necessary detailed data. However, any detailed data that satisfied his 
facts for the variability of io-year-olds and 17-year-olds would show as great 
a disparity as does this drawing between the differences due to seven years 
and that due to causes acting on children of the same age. 



from ten to seventeen has as its upper limit a reduction of 3 
grams in the error made (from 8.6 to 6.0 grams), and is 
probably much less than this. But this is (as shown in Fig. yy) 
small relatively to the individual range within either group, 
this topmost limit for the average effect of seven years of inner 
growth being roughly less than one sixth of the effect of the 
extreme differences in ancestry and training upon children of 
the same age. 



chapter xxv 
The Influence of the Environment 

difficulties in estimating the amount of influence 
of the environment 

The questions suggested by the title of this chapter include 
the effects on individuals of every environmental force, includ- 
ing all the agencies for intellectual and moral education. Pre- 
cise quantitative answers can be given to hardly any of them. 

Theoretically, there is no impossibility. Once we have 
estimated the original nature of a man or group of men, we 
have simply to note the mental changes consequent upon this or 
that change in climate, food, school training, friendship, ser- 
mon, occupation, etc. Practically, the complexity of the action 
of physical and human influences upon intellect and character 
hampers scientific study and favors guesswork. The environ- 
ment includes a practical infinitude of different causes; these 
act differently upon different types of original nature and at 
different ages and with different co-operating circumstances; 
in many cases their action is very complex and must be ob- 
served over long intervals of time. Indeed it has been common 
to deny even the possibility of a science of the dynamics of 
human nature and to remain content with the haphazard opin- 
ions of novelists, proverb makers and village wise men. 

Moreover, it is only by the utmost ingenuity and watchful- 
ness that studies of changes in human nature can be freed from 

376 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT ZTJ 

a characteristic fallacy — that of attributing to training facts 
which are really due to original nature or to selection. For 
instance, college graduates are found to have a much greater 
likelihood of being elected to Congress than other men have. 
Therefore it is said that a college education causes to some 
extent political success. But it is clear that even before they 
went to college the group of youth who did go were different 
from those who did not. Their later election to Congress may 
as well have been due to the mental traits which they possessed 
by birth or otherwise and which caused their inclusion in the 
class 'boys who go to college' as to any changes produced in 
them by the college training itself. In other words, that they 
were the class selected by the college is as important a fact as 
that they were the class trained by it. 

Again it is said : "Who can doubt the enormous disciplin- 
ary value of the study of Latin and Greek when we see the 
admirable intellects of the men so trained in the English uni- 
versities?" But being born from the class whose children go 
to the university of itself ensures to an individual uncommon 
mental ability. 

To avoid this confusion of causes which train with those 
which select is extremely hard. Any class of individuals 
studied because they have been subjected to a certain training 
is almost sure to be a class not only trained by but also selected 
by that training. Suppose that one wishes to study the in- 
fluence of a high-school course, or that of the classical as 
opposed to the scientific course, or that of training in inde- 
pendent research, or that of immoral surroundings. High 
school graduates are but one-fifth of grammar school grad- 
uates; and no one would claim that they represent an entirely 
random picking therefrom. They are surely selected for bet- 
ter birth, fetter abilities and better ideals. Again, in most high 



378 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

schools the graduate of the classical course represents not only 
a different training, but also a different selection, commonly a 
superior selection.* So also scientific men are a class resulting 
not only from the training given by research work, but also 
from the selection of those eager to do and fitted to do that 
work. Children brought up in a morally bad environment are 
almost sure to be of morally inferior ancestry. The ordinary 
arrangement of social and educational careers rarely presents 
us with convenient cases of similar natures, some with, some 
without, the form of training under consideration. 

The difficulty of eliminating the influence of selection is no 
excuse for its neglect. Yet one may hunt through thousands 
of pages of discussions of the influence of certain studies, school 
systems, schemes of culture, religious beliefs, etc., without find- 
ing a hint of its recognition. 

Either because of the general complexity of environmental 
influences upon any mental trait and the mixture of selective 
with formative influences or because of the infrequency of scien- 
tific habits and ideals in students of sociology and education, 
there are few facts of sufficient security and precision to be 
quoted. Only rarely has educational science progressed be- 
yond the reasoned opinions of more or less capable judges. We 
have our beliefs about the causal relations between a hot climate 
and indolence, necessity and invention, lack of parental control 
and crime, religious training and morality, etc., but we can not 
be said to know these influences with adequate surety or to have 
any knowledge whatever of their precise amount. 

A refusal to believe insecure opinions about the influence of 
differences in training in producing differences in human indi- 
viduals does not at all imply disbelief in their influence. Such 
would be absurd. When the original natures are the same, 

*This apparently is becoming less common every year. 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 379 

every difference that the individuals later show must be due to 
differences in the outside forces operating upon them. And 
any difference in outside forces always has its effect. No man 
is left unchanged by even the very least of the environmental 
forces that act upon him. Men are the creatures of circum- 
stance. But they are creations whose final patterns are determ- 
ined in part by sex, race, ancestry and conditions of origin. 
Circumstances alter natures, but the alterations vary with the 
nature altered./ It is precisely because common opinions have 
thought verbally in terms of 'man-training-product of training/ 
instead of concretely in terms of 'men-training-products, — each 
of an individual's nature in interaction with his training' that 
a sound science of the influence of the environment has hardly 
been begun. 

One of the best services such a science can render is to guard 
its students against such verbal plausibilities. For example, 
knowledge is not proportional to opportunity in the sense that 
an individual's degree of knowledge can be foretold from his 
degree of opportunity. Wealth does not create wealth in the 
sense that what a man will have can be estimated from what he 
now has. A good home does not make good children in the 
sense of doing so always and in proportion to its goodness. 
Being treated like slaves may not debase all and never debases 
all alike. The product of the environment is always a result 
of two variables, it and the man's nature. 

Two of the corollaries of this axiom are of special signifi- 
cance. The first is that the environmental stimulus adequate 
to arouse a certain power or ideal or habit in one man may be 
hopelessly inadequate to do so in another. Washing bottles in 
a drug-shop was, if a common story is true, adequate to decide 
Faraday's career, and the voyage on the Beagle is reputed to 
have made Darwin a naturalist for life. But if all the youth 



380 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

of the land were put to work in drug-shops and later sent on 
scientific expeditions, the result would not be a million Faradays 
and Darwins, or even a million chemists and naturalists. All 
that one man may need to be free is a vote; but even a long 
education in self-direction may be inadequate for another. 
Being told a few words suffices to secure the habit of reading 
in one child, while the child beside him remains illiterate after 
two years of careful tuition. The amount of stimulus required 
in some cases is so infinitesimal that the power seems to spring 
absolutely from the man himself. In other men no agency is 
found potent enough to arouse a trace of the desired result. 

The second corollary is that each man in part selects his own 
environment. The boy turns his eyes from the book. Even 
if his eyes attend to it, his mind does not. Even if for the 
time he lets it move him, it may be disregarded in memory. 
That connection which brings satisfaction to one man and is 
thereby given power over him, may disgust another nature and 
so be repudiated by it. As this world's nature selects for sur- 
vival those animals which are adapted to live in it, so any 
individual selects, by action, attention, memory and satisfaction, 
the features of the environment which are to survive as determ- 
inants of his intellect and character. 

Common opinion and the older literature of sociology and 
education neglected the differential action of the environment 
in accord with the nature it acted on, but it would be possible 
for a student, enamored of the simplicity of the explanation of 
all men's differences by differences in their original make-up, to 
neglect equally obvious facts of another sort. He might be 
tempted to claim that, since the features of civilization, — the 
acts, words, books, customs, and institutions of men, — have 
been invented and perpetuated by human natures, and since 
consequently the environment in all important respects is itself 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 381 

due to original nature, — therefore original nature is at bottom 
the cause of almost all of human destinies. "A people gets as 
good government as it deserves ; a race has the environment its 
own nature has found and chosen : a man in essential matters 
is treated as his nature decides." So he might carelessly claim. 

Many important features of the environment are thus due 
to the original nature of the human race as a whole, but no one 
man's nature and, under modern conditions, no one nation's or 
race's is similarly responsible for the particular environment 
that it meets. Forces set in motion by others play upon it. 
At the best it can select only negatively by disregard, and at the 
worst it may be molded directly against nature. 

Even when it is known, and with some precision, that a 
given difference is due to some difference in training, there 
may be doubt or total ignorance as to what difference in train- 
ing caused it. And even when it is known that a given differ- 
ence in training has been operative and has produced an effect, 
there may be doubt or ignorance about what the effect is. 

Illustrations of the former case are abundant in history. 
History is in fact largely a record of unexplained changes in 
human nature. Nearly all the intellectual and moral differ- 
ences between the modern English, French, or Germans and 
their barbarous ancestors of two thousand years ago are due 
to differences in environment. The original natures of the 
stocks may have altered somewhat during that time, but surely 
not much. Our thoughts and ways of thinking and our habits, 
customs and ideals have been and are being made very unlike 
those of our ancestors by some outside forces. But what the 
forces were and how each contributed to the result is not 
known. 

Illustrations of the latter case form a large proportion of 
the facts studied under the vague rubric of education. Such 



382 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

and such children have gone to school, they have been taught 
by such and such teachers, using this and that method, at a 
cost of so many dollars, with aid of a material plant worth so 
much; but what has come of it all, no cautious thinker would 
dare say. What has been and is being done to children in 
schools is more or less well described in official and private 
records, but what happens in children as its consequence is 
largely unknown. 

So much for the attitude in which a student of human na- 
ture must approach the problems of the effect of different 
environments on identical natures, of the effect of the same 
environment on different natures, and of the effect of the end- 
less different co-operations of environments and natures. 

MEASUREMENTS OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 

I shall report three samples of studies of the influence of the 
environment upon intellect and character. The first is Galton's 
History of Twins ['83], a study of the amount of its influence 
in comparison with that of original nature. The second is 
Rice's study of the effect of different school environments 
upon ability in spelling. The third is a study of the effect 
of changing environment upon the choice of a profession by 
scholarly youth. 

Galton collected reports from parents concerning twins who 
were closely similar in infancy Dut whose environments dif- 
fered, and twins who were in infancy notably unlike, but whose 
environments were in all important features identical. The 
increase of differences in the former case and of resemblances 
in the latter gives a measure of the influence of the environment. 
The persistence of similarities in the former case and of differ- 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 383 

ences in the latter gives a measure of the influence of original 
nature. 

The evidence in the case of the twenty pairs in the second 
group shows no exceptions to the rule that no weakening of 
inborn differences by similarities of nurture is observable. The 
following are representative parental observations : — 

1. One parent says: — "They have had exactly the same 
nurture from their birth up to the present time ; they are both 
perfectly healthy and strong, yet they are otherwise as dis- 
similar as two boys could be, physically, mentally, and in their 
emotional nature." 

2. "I can answer most decidedly that the twins have been 
perfectly dissimilar in character, habits, and likeness from the 
moment of their birth to the present time, though they were 
nursed by the same woman, went to school together, and were 
never separated till the age of fifteen." 

3. "They have never been separated, never the least differ- 
ently treated in food, clothing, or education ; both teethed at the 
same time, both had measles, whooping-cough, and scarlatina 
at the same time, and neither had any other serious illness. 
Both are and have been exceedingly healthy and have good 
abilities, yet they differ as much from each other in mental cast 
as any of my family differ from another." 

5. "They were never alike either in body or mind and their 
dissimilarity increases daily. The external influences have 
been identical ; they have never been separated." 

9. "The home-training and influence were precisely the 
same, and therefore I consider the dissimilarity to be accounted 
for almost entirely by innate disposition and by causes over 
which we have no control." 

The two lines of evidence taken together justify, in Galton's 
opinion, the following general statements : 

"We may, therefore, broadly conclude that the only circum- 
stance, within the range of those by which persons of similar 
conditions of life are affected, that is capable of producing a 
marked effect on the character of adults, is illness or some acci- 
dent that causes physical infirmity. . . . The impression that 



384 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

all this leaves on the mind is one of some wonder whether nur- 
ture can do anything at all, beyond giving instruction and 
professional training. There is no escape from the conclusion 
that nature prevails enormously over nurture when the differ- 
ences of nurture do not exceed what is commonly to be found 
among persons of the same rank of society and in the same 
country.'' [ibid. pp. 168 and 172.] 

Dr. Rice's study is quoted at some length because it was the 
first of a series of studies of the actual results of school work, 
still few in number, but destined to increase rapidly with in- 
creasing scientific interest In school administration. 

Dr. Rice ['97] tested the spelling ability of some 33,000 
children in twenty -one schools representing a great variety in 
spirit, methods, time given to spelling and in other respects. 
He then compared the conditions in schools where the pupils 
did well in spelling with those in schools where they did 
badly. He notes first of all the slight differences between 
schools, only 6 out of the 21 schools being outside the limits 
73.3 and 77.9, and the decrease in variation amongst schools 
as we pass from lower to higher grades (see Table 9), facts 
which show that the differences in spirit or method that charac- 
terize schools can not make much difference in achievement. 
Of school systems where mechanical methods are in use as 
compared with more progressive systems he says : 

"Indeed, in both the mechanical and the progressive schools 
the results were variable ; so that while, in some instances, the 
higher figures were secured by the former, in others they were 
obtained by the latter; and the same is true of the lower figures. 
For example, School B, No. 11, in which the best average 
(79.4) was obtained, belongs to a very progressive system; 
while School A, No. 12, which made only 73.9, belongs to one 
of our most mechanical systems. And it is a peculiar incident 
that, in both these cities, the results in the only other school 
examined are exactly reversed, although the environment is 
about the same," 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 385 

He eliminates the possibility that home reading or cultured 
parents or English rather than foreign parentage is the cause 
of the differences amongst schools by making the comparisons 
of Table 10. 

Dr. Rice further tabulated the results in accordance with 
the methods of instruction used in the different schools, inter- 
viewing some two hundred teachers for that purpose. He 
does not give the detailed results, but assures us that there is no 
reason to believe that there is any clear choice between oral and 
written spelling, writing isolated words and writing sentences, 
the sight or flash method and its absence. Phonic reading does 
not make bad spellers, nor do written language work and wide 
general reading make good spellers. "In brief," says he. "there 
is no direct relation between method and results. . . . The 
results varied as much under the same as they did under differ- 
ent methods of instruction." 

That the amount of time given is not the cause of success 
in teaching spelling is shown by the facts of Table 9. Schools 
giving 15 or 20 minutes daily to spelling do as well as those 
giving 40 or 50. 

After this admirable array of facts Dr. Rice jumps rather 
hastily to this speculative conclusion : "The facts here pre- 
sented, in my opinion, will admit of only one conclusion, viz., 
that the results are not determined by the methods employed, 
but by the ability of those who use them. In other words, the 
first place must be given to the personal equation of the teacher, 
while methods and devices play a subordinate part." 

This statement should have been based upon a demonstra- 
tion of a high coefficient of correlation between the measure of 
a class in spelling and the measure of its teacher in ability, or 
of a great increase in variability in spelling ability as we pass 
from the children taught by one teacher to the children taught 

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3 88 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



TABLE 10. (Table 3 of the original account). 





Grade 


0) 

u 




CD 

U 
tn 
m 

u 


M 

"S, 

a 

O 


rt bo 

S3 S 


4; 

a to 


bo 

n! 
u 

> 


f Children 
lg Foreign 
guage at 
Tome 


bo 


_ <D U 

c 2: ; <u 

<u • -. U 

1-^: 


ID 

bo 
rt 

<u 












o< 




< 


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^S^ 


< 












O 




u 




• ?tJ 




U 








£ 


£ 


£ 








£w 










f Fourth . . 


4 


27 


821 


647 


155 


65.2 


159 


64.9 


129 


62.5 




1 Fifth .... 


4 


29 


829 


76. 


153 


77-4 


157 


76.7 


129 


74-5 


W "1 


-i Sixth.... 


4 


22 


778 


697 


185 


69.6 


165 


70.3 


119 


70.4 


W 


I Seventh . 


4 


18 


S66 


78.8 


81 


82.5 


52 


8l,5 


55 


76.8 


to 


[Eighth... 


4 


19 


528 


83.I 


72 


83.2 


64 


83.2 


76 


85. 



by 10 or 20 different teachers. I calculate that if the reliabil- 
ities of Dr. Rice's eighth grade averages are what they would 
seem to be from tests made in eighth grades by myself and my 
students,* the differences amongst them are not much greater 
than we would expect by the law of chance if the teaching 
were in all cases equally efficient. The average deviation from 
their mean of the 12 eighth grade classes which were tested in 
the first half of the year is 1.9; that of the 13 tested in the last 
half of the year is 2.6; the average deviation by pure chance 
of 12 eighth grade classes of 40 students each would be 1.9, 
the variability of individuals being 12.2. So, in the case of the 
eighth grades, we may need no cause at all for the differences 
amongst schools save the inaccuracy of the averages due to 
the small number of cases. 

The third sample of studies of the influence of the environ- 
ment is not of major importance, but is distinctive in that its 
facts cannot be accounted for by any force other than the 
environment. The facts are the changes in the careers ot 
scholarly college graduates from the class of 18.40 to that oi 
1895, comprising 5283 members of the honorary society, $BK, 



*These give a variability of 12.2 amongst the individuals of the grade. 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 389 

admission to which was substantially a recognition of superior 
scholarship in college. 

The four professions, law, medicine, teaching and the min- 
istry, have, together, attracted almost exactly the same propor- 
tion of scholarly men in each decade. The per cent of $ B K 
graduates entering some one of these four professions was 
65 in 1840-59, 6$y 2 in 1860-69, 65 ni x 870-79, and 64 in 
1 880- 1 894. 

Among the professions, however, there have been marked 
changes, as shown in Table n. In twenty years the law 
doubled its attractiveness to scholarly men and then, in half that 
time, lost two-thirds of its gain. Medicine was, in the last 
decade of the period, becoming more attractive. The table 
shows a very rapid rise in the popularity of teaching from 1840 
to i860 and again from 1870 to 1895. The years from '60 
to '65 show an opposite tendency. The law was then gaining 
rapidly and the ministry was holding its own. The most 
striking change was the decrease in the proportion of scholarly 
men making the ministry their life work. The decrease would 
be even more marked if those who entered the ministry but gave 
up its regular work for that of teaching were included. The 
incomplete records available in the $ B K Catalogue of 1900 
give only $ l / 2 per cent of clergymen amongst those graduating 
from '95-'99; and even with later additions the per cent for 
1900 is probably under 10. 

Roughly, it may be said that three-fourths of the scholarly 
young men who entered the ministry in 1850 would have gone 
into teaching or the law if they had happened to be born a half 
century later. The same original natures choose differently 
because the social and intellectual environment has changed- 

The near future will doubtless see a rapid increase in the 
number and improvement in the quality of studies of the en- 



39° INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

viro^mental causes of individual differences in mental traits. 
Rice's investigation of the differences due to different features 
of administration and teaching has been followed by similar 
studies by Cornman ['02], Stone ['c8], Courtis ['09 and later] 
and Thorndike ['10]. Experts in education are becoming 
experimentalists and quantitative thinkers and are seeking to 
verify or refute the established beliefs concerning the effects of 





TABLE 11. 






es of Scholarly Youths 


Making Their Life Work Th 




Law 


Medicine 


Teaching 


Ministry 


1840 — 1844 


14 




9.4 


37-5 


1845 — 1846 


14 


6 


11.6 


40 


1850—1854 


9-3 


>■ 


137 


36.5 


1855— 1859 


10.5 J 




16.4 


34-5 


i860— 1864 


15.2 


5-5 


17.2 


27-5 


1865— 1869 


19.7 


4 


13-9 


28.5 


1870 — 1874 


19.8 


5-5 


16.4 


22.5 


1875— 1879 


22.5 


4 


17.6 


22 


1880— 1884 


16.4 


4-5 


21.4 


19-5 


1885— 1889 


14.4 


7-5 


25-5 


16 


1890 — 1894 


19 


7 


25-4 


14 



educational forces upon human nature. Students of history, 
government, sociology, economics, ethics and religion are be- 
coming, or will soon become, quantitative thinkers concerning 
the shares of the various physical and social forces in making 
individual men differ in politics, crime, wealth, service, ideal- 
ism, or whatever trait concerns man's welfare. 

To the facts presented in these three sample studies and 
in previous chapters, we may add certain very significant 
measures of the effect of equal amounts of exercise of a func- 
tion upon individual differences in respect to efficiency in it. 
The argument is as follows : In so far as the differences in 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 39 1 

achievement found amongst a group of men are due to differ- 
ences in the quantity and quality of training which they have 
had in the function in question, the provision of equal amounts 
of the same sort of training for all individuals in the group 
should act to reduce the differences. Suppose, for example, 
that eleven individuals showed efficiencies of 10, n, 12, 13, 
14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 respectively in the number of 
words that they could typewrite per minute. Suppose that this 
variation had been entirely caused by a corresponding variation 
in the amount of time they had spent in practicing typewriting, 
say 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 hours. Then giving 
each individual 10 hours more of practice, so that the range in 
respect to amount of practice would be from 15 to 25 hours, 
should result in reducing the relative differences. The person 
who now had had 15 hours of practice should by the hypothesis 
show an efficiency of 20, while the person with 25 hours of 
practice would not be expected to be beyond 30. Whereas the 
limiting scores were as 2 to 1 (20 to 10), they should not now 
differ more than as 3 to 2 (30 to 20).* 

If the addition of equal amounts of practice does not reduce 
the differences found amongst men, those differences can not 
well be explained to any large extent by supposing them to have 
been due to corresponding differences in amount of previous 
practice. If, that is, inequalities in achievement are not reduced 
by equalizing practice, they cannot well have been caused by 
inequalities in previous practice. If differences in opportunity 
cause the differences men display, making opportunity more 
nearly equal for all by adding equal amounts to it in each case 
should make the differences less. 

*The exact expectation would, of course, depend upon the form of the 
practice-curve in question for the function in question and the cooperating 
factors in the learners; the illustration is made arbitrarily simple. 



39 2 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



The facts found are rather startling. Equalizing* practice 
seems to increase differences. The superior man seems to have 
got his present superiority by his own nature rather than by 
superior advantages of the past, since, during a period of equal 
advantages for all, he increases his lead. 

The following table (Table 12) giving the initial and final 
scores in practice at the mental multiplication of a three-place 
by a three-place number, speaks for itself. The same effect 
appears, though less emphatically, in the case of Whitley's nine 
individuals in a similar experiment ['n]. The four who were 
most efficient at the start made a greater average gain from 
equal practice than the four who were least efficient. 



TABLE 12. 

The Effect of Equal Amounts of Practice upon Individual Differences 

in the Mental Multiplication of a Three-place 

by a Three-place Number. 

Amount done Percentage of 



Ini 









per unit of 




correct figures 








time. 




in 


answers. 






V 



u 

Ph 


■a 

H 

s 

C8 




u Ji 

"5. 


c 


01 

u 

B 

CO 




^ Ji 
a 


.5 






»« 


X 


VI g 


'« 


W 


w, g 


'rt 









en X 


O 


WJ 


+j ca 

CO X 


u 






u 

3 
O 


in 
u 






U 


«U 








K 


£ 






E 






itial highest five individuals 


5-1 


85 


U7 


6l 


70 


78 


18 


next 


five 


5-i 


56 


107 


51 


68 


78 


10 


U i( 


six " 


5-3 


46 


68 


22 


74 


82 


8 


(( u 


six 


54 


38 


46 


8 


58 


70 


12 


t( (( 


five " 


5-2 


31 


57 


26 


47 


67 


20 


11 it 


one individual 


5-2 


19 


32 


13 


100 


82 


-/<? 



Using the multiplication of a three-place by a one-place 
number Starch ['n] got results showing the same effect. Of 
his eight subjects, the three best averaged 39 examples per 10 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 393 

minutes in the initial test and gained on the average 45 in the 
course of doing 700 examples. The three lowest, who averaged 
25 examples per 10 minutes in the initial test, gained only 26 
in the course of doing 700 examples, in spite of the fact that 
700 examples represented for them a much greater amount of 
practice, measured in time spent. 

In the case of addition [Thorndike, 'io], the initially high- 
est individuals of nineteen adults showed this same greater gain 
in amount done at equal accuracy per unit of time when all 
nineteen were given approximately equal practice. The facts 
are given in Table 13. Similar results have been obtained by 
Wells ['12], Kirby ['13], Hahn and Thorndike ['14] and 
others. 

TABLE 13. 

The Effect of Equal Amounts of Practice upon Individual Differences 
in Column- Addition of One-place Numbers. 

Average number of additions per Average time spent 

5 minutes corrected for errors in practice from 

mid-point of first 
test to mid-point 
Gain of last test (in • 

minutes) 

140 40 

ill 49 

54 46 

These experiments concerning the effect of practice upon 
individual differences in mental multiplication, addition, mark- 
ing A's on printed sheets of capitals and the like are too re- 
stricted in scope and in the amount of practice to justify any 
general application of their results. In other mental functions 





First 


Last 




test 


test 


Initially highest 6 






individuals 


297 


437 


Initially next highest 






6 individuals 


234 


345 


Initially lowest 7 






individuals 


167- 


220- 



394 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

the achievements of a man in comparison to his fellows may be 
more a consequence of his advantages and less a consequence 
of his own nature. So far as they go, however, experiments 
in practice have given no support to the common assumption 
that differences in external conditions are responsible for the 
bulk of the variation found among men of the same race and 
general social status. 

THE METHOD OF ACTION OF DIFFERENCES IN ENVIRONMENT 

We may summarize the methods whereby different environ- 
ments act upon intellect and morals as : — 

1. Furnishing or withholding the physiological conditions 
for the brain's growth and health. 

2. Furnishing or withholding adequate stimuli to arouse 
the action of which the brain is by original nature or previous 
action capable. 

3. Reinforcing some and eliminating others of these activi- 
ties in consequence of the general law of effect.* 

According to this description we should look upon the 
mental life of an individual as developing in the same way that 
the animal or plant kingdom has developed. As conditions of 
heat and food-supply have everywhere been the first requisite to 
and influence on animal life, so the physiological conditions of 
the brain's activities are the first modifiers of feeling and action. 
As the stimuli of climate, food, unknown chemical and electrical 
forces and the rest have been the means of creating variations 
in the germs or of stimulating to action the inner tendency of 

*In all animals capable of profiting by training any act which in a given 
situation brings satisfaction becomes thereby more closely associated with 
that situation, so that when that situation recurs the act will recur also. 
An act that brings discomfort becomes dissociated from the situation and 
less likely to recur. 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 395 

the germs to vary, and so have rendered possible the production 
of millions of different animal types, so the sights and sounds 
and smells of things, the words and looks and acts of men, the 
utensils and machinery and buildings of civilization, its pictures 
and music and books, awaken in the mind new mental varieties, 
new species of thoughts and acts. In a score of years from 
birth the human mind, like the animal world, originates its 
universe of mental forms. And as, in the animal kingdom, 
many of these variations fail to fit the conditions of physical 
nature and die after a generation or two, so in any one of us 
many of the mental forms produced are doomed to a speedy 
disappearance in consequence of their failure to fit outside 
events. The elimination of one species by others in the animal 
world is again paralleled by the death of those thoughts or acts 
which are out of harmony with others. Species of thoughts, 
like species of animals, prey upon one another in a struggle in 
which survival is the victor's reward. Further, just as species 
of animals fitted to one environment perish or become trans- 
formed when that environment changes, so mental forms fitted 
to infancy perish or are transformed in school life; mental 
forms fitted to school life perish in the environment of the work- 
aday world; and so throughout the incessant changes of a 
mind's surroundings. In mental life resulting pain or dis- 
comfort is the cause of the extinction of a species. The condi- 
tion of a man's mind at any stage in its history is then, like the 
condition of the animal kingdom at any stage in the history of 
the world, the result not only of the new varieties that have 
aopeared, but also of a natural selection working upon them. 
The tale of a human mind's progress is the tale of the extinction 
of its failures. Possibility of existence, stimuli to variations, 
selection by elimination : these words that describe the action of 



396 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

the environment on animal life are equally competent to tell the 
record of a human life. 

The influence of any environmental agency, physical or 
social, varies with its avoidability. Oligarchies lose in influence 
if there is a democracy to which men may emigrate. Customs 
do not make men so infallibly if there is a radical party, how- 
ever small, which offers an alternative mode of life. Music's 
charms to soothe obviously are not so universal if men can 
close their ears. A creed loses authority as soon as one dis- 
believer seeks converts. Social environments, institutions, be- 
liefs and modes of behavior are nearly omnipotent when undis- 
puted ; for to be the first man to revolt means either that one is 
a mere eccentric and so sure to be a failure, or that one is a 
genius and so very rare. But once a revolt is started and 
advertised, it may much more easily attract those whose original 
natures it fits. And they may be the more attracted by it for 
having been exposed to the opposite force. So a given environ- 
mental force may even act as a stimulus toward just the 
opinions, interests or acts that it is designed to thwart. 

There are many differences in thought and conduct which 
are nearly equally tolerated by all original natures. To wear a 
hat or not to wear a hat, to express requests and opinions in 
English or to express them in German, to learn astrology or to 
learn the Ptolemaic astronomy or to learn the Copernican 
astronomy — to all original natures these are nearly indifferent 
issues. Which is done depends almost exclusively on environ- 
ment. In general this is true of all the 'whats' of knowledge 
and technique. How many and how hard things a man can 
learn or do are largely decided by original nature, but, within 
these limits, what he learns or does is largely a matter of what 
he is stimulated to do and rewarded for doing. On the other 
hand, there are many features of original nature each of which 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 397 

acts to produce nearly the same effect in spite of such differences 
in outside forces as different men can meet in modern civilized 
countries. In such countries it seems possible for any one to 
be a poet, or to be a political leader, or to be a money-maker, if 
his nature so orders. Original nature in general is not irrepres- 
sible, and no form of it is absolutely irrepressible; but some 
forms of original nature seem to be nearly irrepressible by any 
of the environments a man in this country today is likely to 
have. 

THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF ORIGINAL NATURE AND 
ENVIRONMENT 

It is impossible at present to estimate with security the rela- 
tive shares of original nature, due to sex, race, ancestry and 
accidental variation, and of the environment, physical and 
social, in causing the differences found in men. One can only 
learn the facts, interpret them with as little bias as possible, 
and try to secure more facts. This interpretation is left to the 
student, but with certain cautions in addition to or in amplifica- 
tion of those already explained. 

Many of the false inferences about nature versus nurture 
are due to neglect of the obvious facts : — that if the environ- 
ments are alike with respect to a trait, the differences in respect 
to it are due entirely to original nature; that if the original 
natures are alike with respect to a trait, the differences in respect 
to it are due entirely to differences in training; and that the 
problem of relative shares, where both are effective, includes all 
the separate problems of each kind of environment acting with 
each kind of nature. Any one estimate for all cases would be 
absurd. 

Many disagreements spring from a confusion of what may 



39 8 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

be called absolute achievement with what may be called relative 
achievement. A man may move up a long distance from zero 
and nevertheless be lower down than before in comparison with 
other men : absolute gain may be relative loss. One thinker 
may attribute differences in achievement almost wholly to nur- 
ture while another holds nature to be nearly ' supreme, though 
both thinkers possess just the same data, if the former is think- 
ing of absolute and the latter of relative achievement. The 
commonest error resulting is that of concluding from the 
importance of sex and ancestral heredity that education and 
social control in general are futile. On the contrary, as I have 
elsewhere said, such studies as those of Chapters XXII, and 
XXIII merely prove the existence of, and measure certain deter- 
minants of, human intellect and character and demonstrate that 
the influences of the environment are differential, the product 
varying not only in accord with the environmental force itself 
but also in accord with the original nature upon which it 
operates. We may even expect that education will be doubly 
effective, once society recognizes the advantages given to some 
and denied to others by heredity. That men have different 
amounts of capacity does not imply any the less advantage from 
or need of wise investment. If it be true, for example, that the 
negro is by nature unintellectual and joyous, this does not imply 
that he may not be made more intelligent by wiser training 
or misanthropic and ugly-tempered by the treatment he now 
receives. It does mean that we should be stupid to expect the 
same results from him that we should from an especially 
intellectual race like the Jews, and that he will stand with 
equanimity a degree of disdain which a Celt would requite with 
dynamite and arson. 

To the real work of man for man, — the increase of achieve - 
ment through the improvement of the environment, — the influ- 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 399 

ence of heredity offers no barrier. But to the popular demands 
from education and social reforms it does. For the common 
man does not much appreciate absolute happiness or absolute 
betterment. He does not rejoice that he and his children are 
healthier, happier and more supplied with noble pleasures than 
were his ancestors of a thousand years ago. His complaint is 
that he is not so well off as some of those about him ; his pride 
is that he is above the common herd. The common man 
demands relative superiority, — to be above those of his own 
time and locality. If his son leads the community, he does not 
mind his real stupidity ; to be the handsomest girl in the county 
is beauty enough. Social discontent comes from the knowl- 
edge or fancy that one is below others in welfare. The effort 
of children in school, of men in labor and of women in the home 
is, except as guided by the wise instincts of nature or more 
rarely by the wisdom of abstract thought, to rise above some 
one who seems higher. Thus the prizes which most men really 
seek are after all in large measure given or withheld by original 
nature. In the actual race of life, which is not to get ahead, 
but to get ahead of somebody, the chief determining factor is 
heredity. 

But the prizes which education ought to seek are all within 
its power. The results for which a rational mankind would 
strive are determined largely by mankind itself. For the com- 
mon good it is indifferent who is at the top, — which men are 
achieving most. The important thing for the common good, 
for all men, is that the top should be high — that much should 
be achieved. To the absolute welfare of all men together edu- 
cation is the great contributor. 

Another caution is not to make false inferences about moral 
responsibility from the fact that individual differences are in 
large measure due to nature; nor to use such false inferences 



400 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

to discourage acceptance of evidence in support of this fact. 
It is from time to time complained that a doctrine which 
refers mental traits largely to original make-up, and conse- 
quently to ancestry, discourages the ambitions of the well- 
intentioned and relieves the world's failures from merited 
contempt. But every one is agreed that a man's free will works 
only within limits, and it will not much matter for our practical 
attitude whether those limits are somewhat contracted. If the 
question is between original nature and the circumstances of 
nurture it is rather more encouraging to believe that success 
will depend on inherent qualities than to refer it entirely to 
advantages possessed during life, and contempt is merited more 
by him who has failed through being the inferior person than 
by the one who has failed simply from bad luck. Whether or 
not it is merited in either of the two cases we shall decide in 
view of our general notions about merit and blame, not of our 
psychological theories of the causes of conduct. 

On the whole it seems certain that prevalent opinions much 
exaggerate the influence of differences in circumstances and 
training in producing the intellectual and moral differences 
found in men of the same nation and epoch. Certain natures 
seem to have been made by certain environments when really 
the nature already made selected that environment. Certain 
environments seem to eliminate certain traits from an individual 
when really they merely expel the individual in toto. 

Thinkers about the organized educational work of church, 
library and school need especially to remember three facts. 

First. — For the more primitive and fundamental traits in 
human nature such as energy, capability, persistence, leadership, 
sympathy and nobility the whole world affords the stimulus, a 
stimulus that is present well-nigh everywhere. If a man's 
original nature will not respond to the need of these qualities 



THE INFLUENCE OF THE ENVIRONMENT 4OI 

and the rewards always ready for them, it is vain to expect 
much from the paltry exercises of the schoolroom. 

Second. — The channels in which human energy shall pro- 
ceed, the specific intellectual and moral activities that shall profit 
by human capacities, are less determined by inborn traits. The 
schools should invest in profitable enterprises the capital nature 
provides. We can not create intellect, but we can prevent such 
a lamentable waste of it as was caused by scholasticism. We 
can not double the fund of human sympathy, but we can keep 
it clear of sentimental charity. 

Third. — Morality is more susceptible than intellect to en- 
vironmental influence. Moral traits are more often matters of 
the direction of capacities and the creation of desires and aver- 
sions. Over them then education has greater sway, though 
school education, because of the peculiar narrowness of the life 
of the schoolroom, has so far done little for v\ny save the semi- 
intellectual virtues. 

The one thing that educational theorists o£ today seem to 
place as the foremost duty of the schools — the development of 
powers and capacities — is the one thing that the schools or any 
other educational forces can do least. The one t^ing that they 
can do best is to establish those particular connections with 
ideas which we call knowledge and those particular w mictions 
with acts which we call habits. 



2b 



chapter xxvi 

The Nature and Amount of Individual Differences in 
Single Traits 

For the purpose of the following discussion, let a 'single 
trait/ be defined as one whose varying conditions in men can be 
measured on one scale. A combination of traits requires two 
or more scales. For example, in so far as the difference be- 
tween John and James in reaction time to sound can be meas- 
ured as so many thousandths of a second on one scale, reaction 
time to sound is a single trait. The difference between John 
and James in temperament, on the contrary, can be stated only 

in terms of several scales, such as quick slow, intense 

superficial, broad narrow, and the like. So 

temperament is to be regarded as a combination of traits. 

Individuals may be compared with respect to one trait at a 
time, or with respect to certain combinations of traits. We 
naturally take up first the simpler case. 

THE CONTINUITY OF MENTAL VARIATIONS 

Continuity of variations means two things, — the absence 
of regularly recurring gaps, such as those between 2 petals, 
3 petals, 4 petals, and the like, and the absence of irregularly 
recurring gaps, such as those between mice and rats, between 
rats and squirrels, and the like. 

That continuity* of variations in a mental trait taken 

*Of course continuity is not taken here in the sense of infinite divisibility. 
There are doubtless ultimately unit-factors which either act or do not act, 

402 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN SINGLE TRAITS 



403 



singly is the rule can best be realized by trying to find excep- 
tions to it. Such there may be, but I am not aware that any 
mental trait varying in amount has been shown to vary by 
discrete steps. A misleading appearance of regularly recurring 
gaps often arises from inadequate measurements. In a test of 
memory, for example, 12 nonsense syllables being read, indi- 
viduals may appear in the scores as 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 without 



n n n 



n 



too 



500 



n_n 




.600 



500 



Fig. 78. The distribution of the cases falling between 500 and 700 seconds in 
adding 48 columns each of 10 one-place numbers, when, in all, 37 individuals 
were measured (upper diagram) ; and when, in all, 200 individuals were 
measured (lower diagram). 



and which consequently increase the amount of the trait by either zero or 
a certain amount. But the discrete steps are exceedingly small like the 
steps of increase of physical mass by atoms. Intelligence, rate of movement, 
memory, quickness of association, accuracy of discrimination, leadership 
of men and so on are continuous in the sense tha. mass, amperage, heat, 
human stature and anemia are. 



404 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

any 5-5's, 6-75's and the like. But if four such tests are made 
and the average is taken, there will be 5.5's and 6.75's. 

A misleading- appearance of irregular discontinuity often 
arises from the insufficient number of cases measured. If only 
a few individuals are measured in a trait or if the scale is a fine 
one, there will of course be divisions on the scale or amounts 
of the trait unrepresented in any individuals. Fig. 78 gives 
an illustration of such a misleading appearance of discontinuity. 

It should be unnecessary to warn the reader against the 
absurdity of deliberately changing continuous variations into a 
few groups by coarse scaling; next assuming that the central 
part of one of these coarse divisions really measures all the 
individuals therein ; and finally imagining that, because the con- 
tinuous series, varying from a to a -f- b, has been called, say, 
Poor, Medium, Good and Excellent, there are really gaps 
within it! Unfortunately even gifted thinkers are guilty of 
this error. 

THE RELATIVE FREQUENCIES OF DIFFERENT AMOUNTS OF 
DIFFERENCE 

Fig. 79 shows the relative frequencies of the different 
amounts of the trait in the case of six mental traits. These six 
distributions illustrate the statement that 'variations usually 
cluster around one central tendency/ This statement is not„ 
however, universally, or even commonly, accepted. On the 
contrary the common opinion is that the distribution of indi- 
viduals with respect to the amount of a single trait is multi- 
model, as in Fig. 80A, or even 3 compound of entirely distinct 
species, as in Fig. 80B. The~e would then be many small 
differences and many large differences with few cases of 
medium differences. This may be called the 'multiple type' 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN SINGLE TRAITS 4°5 




B 





Fig. 79. Samples of the Forms of Distribution Found in Mental Traits. 

A. Reaction time: 252 college freshmen. 

B. Memory of digits: 123 women students. 

C. Efficiency in marking A's on a sheet of printed capitals: 312 boys from 12 

years o months to 13 years o months. 

D. Efficiency in giving the opposites of words: 239 boys from 12 years o months 

to 13 years o months. 

E. Accuracy in drawing lines to equal a 100 mm. line: 153 girls from 13 years 

o months to 16 years o months. 
F- Efficiency ift marking words containing each the two letters a and t: 312 boys 

from 12 years months to 13 years o months. 
Is all six cases the feft end of the scale represents the lowest abilities — that is, 
the longest times in A, the fewest digits in B, etc. The continuous lines give 
the distributions. The broken lines are tp be disregarded for the present. 



406 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



theory. For instance, in the case of intellect we find the terms 
genius, normal, feeble-minded, imbecile and idiot used as if the 
geniuses were separated by a clear gap from the normal indi- 
viduals, these again from the feeble-minded, and so on. So 
also visualizers and non-visualizers, or men of normal color 




Fig. 80. Multimodal Distributions. 



vision and the color blind, are spoken of as if those in each 
group were all almost identical and all much unlike all in the 
other group. 

Multimodality is to be expected in traits the amount of 
which may be greatly increased or decreased by some one 
cause (or number of causes commonly acting together). If, 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN SINGLE TRAITS 4°7 

for instance, reading Aristotle added enormously to anyone's 
intellectual gifts, we should expect to find men divided into 
two distinct surfaces of frequency on a scale for intellect, the 
higher ranking species being made up almost exclusively or 
even entirely of those who had taken the Aristotelian dose. 

In certain traits, such as knowledge of a certain language, 
or ability to play a certain game, there are two species. One 
includes those who have had no opportunity to get the knowl- 
edge or ability and whose knowledge or ability is consequently 
o; the other is made up of those who have had some oppor- 
tunity to get the knowledge or ability and who range in it from 
o or near o to a large amount. Understanding of spoken 
English, or ability to play chess or whist or golf, or ability to 
typewrite or to navigate a ship by the compass, would, of 
course, give such groups, if measured in adults the world over. 
Here the cause does not produce a uniform amount of the trait, 
but the world is so arranged that on many persons the cause 
does not act at all. 

Many such causes may act in the case of particular habits, 
knowledges and skills. Since, for example, some Germans 
are, and some are not, subjected to the action of enforced 
military service, there may well be two modes to the surface of 
frequency of knowledge of the manual of arms, one group all 
knowing it very well, the other group knowing hardly anything 
about it. Apprenticeship to a certain trade, or enrollment in a 
certain kind of school, may thus lead to extreme and uniform 
amounts of knowledge of, say, plastering or typewriting or 
medicine, so as to divide human nature sharply into an ordinary 
and an expert class. How far this happens is not known. 

If sex made a great enough difference in the amount of any 
trait, there would be two modes in the surface of frequency for 
the trait in question in the two sexes combined. But observable 



4 o8 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 



bimodality as a result of mixture of the sexes does not in fact 
appear, because the sex differences are so small. In traits in 
which race makes a great difference there will tend to be a 
mode for each racial type if two extreme races are mixed. 
If, however, all races or a random selection of races, were 
mixed, the resulting surface of frequency would not show a 
distinct mode for each, or probably for any one. Even so 
great a difference as that between the whites and the colored 
in scholarship in the high school is shown in the combined 
distribution only by a flattening of the surface of frequency 
as compared with that of either race alone (see Fig. 8i). 
The common opinion that there are distinct species of 




Fig. 8 i. The Relative Frequencies of Different Degrees of High-School Scholarship 
m a Group Composed of 150 Whites and 150 Negroes. The lowest grade of 
scholarship is at the left, the highest grade at the right, end of the scale. The 
two separate distributions. iu?re combined, are shown in Fig. 74. 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN SINGLE TRAITS 409 

individuals, with more or less pronounced gaps between, does 
not, however, limit itself to presupposing- such multimodalities 
as those made by men and women, by Germans and Bushmen, 
by five-year-olds and fifteen-year-olds, by the ordinary popula- 
tion and the blind in respect to vision, by plumbers and non- 
plumbers in respect to skill in plumbing, by those who never 
tried to learn chess and those who did, in respect to ability at 
playing chess, and the like. It knows little or nothing of the 
effect of various combinations of causes upon the form of dis- 
tribution of a trait and it thinks of men as divided off into sharp 
classes in mental traits chiefly because it has not thought 
properly about the question at all. It merely accepts the crude 
adjectives and nouns which express primitive awareness of 
individual differences, as representatives of corresponding 
divisions in reality; neglects the existence of intervening 
grades; and does not even attempt to estimate the frequencies 
grade by grade. How strong this tendency to verbal thinking 
is can be beautifully illustrated by the firm conviction of even 
long-trained men of science that people are either markedly 
right- or markedly left-handed, are either 'normal' in color 
vision or far removed from the 'normal' in color weakness or 
color blindness. Until recently the superstition that a great 
gulf separated children of normal intellect from the imbeciles 
and idiots was also very strong in many scientific men. The 
multiple-type theory does not refer to the separation of indi- 
viduals into groups by the presence or absence of some one 
cause, or closely interrelated group of causes. It simply 
vaguely fancies that individuals, even of the same sex, race, age 
and training, somehow naturally fall into distinct classes or 
'types.' 

In such a form it is surely almost always, if not always, 
wrong. A group of such individuals does not, as a rule, show 



410 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

a separation into two or more groups, all in one being much 
like each other and little like any of those in the other group, 
or groups. Here again the rule may be verified by searching 
for exceptions to it. I know of no such. It is indeed a question 
whether there are any 'types' that are distinct enough to really 
deserve the name. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

The Nature and Amount of Individual Differences in 

Combinations of Traits: Types of Intellect 

and Character 

One feels a bareness and paltriness in such piecemeal 
descriptions of human beings and their differences one from 
another as have been given in the last chapter. The actual 
varieties of human nature do not stand out when one trait at 
a time is measured. Why, it may be asked, does psychology 
not take actual whole natures and state how they differ ? Why 
does psychology not describe human minds as zoology de- 
scribes animal bodies, by classifying them into families, genera 
and species, and by stating the differences between the different 
sorts of minds found ? 

It is true that zoology does not measure all animals in 
length, then in weight, then in color, then in number of organs, 
then in number of bones, and so on through a list of particular 
traits. It began with types or sorts apparent to common 
observation, such as worms and fishes, and described their 
essential features and the characteristic differences of one sort 
from another. And it is true that psychology might try to do 
likewise. If there were types or sorts of minds equally ap- 
parent to common observation, it would surely be worth while 
to start a description of human nature's varieties with them. 
But there are no sorts or types of minds that stand out clearly 
as birds, fishes and worms do amongst animal forms. 

4H 



412 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

A SAMPLE PROBLEM : INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN IMAGERY 

As a sample of the problems and their treatment we may 
take the natures of individuals in respect to type of imagery, 
that is, in respect to the combination of: — vividness of visual 
images, fidelity of visual images, frequency of visual images, 
vividness of auditory images, fidelity of auditory images, and 
so on, through the list. 

Early in the history of the scientific study of imagery it 
was noted that certain individuals were able to recall in memory 
presentations to one sense with a high degree of vividness and 
fidelity, but lacked this power in the case of presentations to 
some other sense. The existence of persons who, for instance, 
could get before the mind's eye vividly and with full detail a 
mental photograph, as it were, of a scene, but could not thus 
reproduce from within a melody, an itching nose, or a blow, 
naturally gave rise to the notion of the 'visualizing type.' 

Such cases, of notable ability to get one sort of images and 
notable inability to get other sorts, were then carelessly as- 
sumed to be the rule. It was supposed that a high degree of 
vividness, fidelity and frequency in images from one sense 
tended to exclude an equally high degree in images from other 
senses. People were called visualizers, audiles, motiles, etc., 
with the meaning that the visualizers had more vivid, faithful 
and frequent visual images than other people and less vivid, 
faithful and frequent images from other senses, and similarly 
for the audiles, or motiles. In graphic form this view would 
give Fig. 82. 

But the actual examination of individuals showed such 
exclusiveness or predominance of one sort of imagery to be the 
exception rather than the rule. To even superficial examina- 
tion it was evident that human natures did not fit into the 



DIFFERENCES IN COMBINATIONS OF TRAITS 



413 



scheme of Fig. 82 at all well. Even those who believed unhes- 
itatingly that human natures must be distributed around fairly 
distinct types in respect to imagery could not, try as they might, 
distribute individuals around these types. Meumann in fact 
admits that in all his studies of children he never found one 
such pure type. "How rare the pure types [of imagery] are 




T - 

Fig. 82. The Interrelations of the Degree of Development of Visual, Auditory, 
Motor, and Touch Imagery according to the Theory of Pure Types. Imaginary 
horizontal lines at V, A, M and T are! scales for the degree of vividness, fidelity 
and frequency of visual, auditory, motor and touch imagery respectively. The 
lowest degree is in each case at the left. 12 individuals are represented, each 
by a line crossing each of the scales at the point representing the individual's 
ability. 

amongst children is witnessed by the fact that in our extensive 
investigations of children at Zurich we have never found a 
perfectly pure type. Also I know of no case in the entire litera- 
ture of the subject in which sure proof is given of the existence 
of a pure type in the case of children." ['07, I, p. 494] So 
new intermediate types, such as the auditory-motor, visual- 
motor, auditory-visual, or even visual-auditory-motor-intellec- 
tual (!) [Segal, '08], were introduced. There the matter 
remained until Betts ['09] actually measured a sufficient num- 
ber of individuals in respect to the vividness and fidelity of non- 
verbal images from the different sense-fields, so that such 
cross-lines as those of Fig. 82 could be located by fact instead 
of by opinion. 

The pillars of the doctrine were the separation of men into 
types according to the predominance of images from one sense, 
and the existence of inverse relations between the different 



414 



INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

o w o 




DIFFERENCES IN COMBINATIONS OF TRAITS 4x5 

sense-spheres in respect to the extent and perfection of imagery. 
Fact showed opinion to have been grossly in error as a result 
of its assumption that distinct types of some sort there must be ; 
The contrary is true. Instead of distinct types, there is a con- 
tinuous gradation. Instead of a few 'pure' types or many 
'mixed' types, there is one type — mediocrity. Instead of 
antagonism between the development of imagery from one sense 
and that from other senses there is a close correlation. Fig. 
83 is a fair sample of the facts found. 

This case is instructive because the fate of many theories 
concerning distinct types of human nature in combinations of 
traits is likely to be the same as the fate of the doctrine of types 
of imagery according to the sense involved, with inverse rela- 
tions between the development of imagery from one sense-field 
and that from other fields. In the case of temperament, for 
example, we have the same history. Extreme cases are given 
names and made into types. Verbal contrasts are supposed to 
have real existence. Supplementary types are invented to help 
out the discrepancies between the imagined types and the real 
distribution of individuals. And it is highly probable that, 
when actual measurements are made, mediocrity — a tempera- 
ment moderately sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melan- 
choly; moderately slow, quick, shallow, intense, narrow and 
broad; moderately slow-shallow, slow-intense-narrow; moder- 
ately everything, — will be found to be the one real type. 

THE THEORY OF MULTIPLE TYPES AND THE SINGLE-TYPE 

THEORY 

The sample problem shows well two extreme views which 
may be taken of the varieties of human natures, of the same sex, 
race and degree of maturity, in respect to any combination of 



416 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

traits. On the one hand is the theory of multiple types, a theory 
which separates men more or less sharply into classes, and 
describes a man by naming the class to which he belongs. On 
the other hand is the theory of a single human type, a theory 
which joins all men one to another in a continuity of variation 
and describes a man by stating the nature and amount of his 
divergences from the single type. 

By the theory of a single type, one make-up can be con- 
ceived such that from it all individuals would differ less than 
they would from any other one make-up, and such that, the 
greater the divergences, the rarer they would be. By the theory 
of multiple types, no such single true central tendency would 
exist. By the theory of multiple types, if a number, K, of 
'typical' natures or make-ups are most favorably taken and if 
divergences of all individuals are measured from, in each case, 
that nature which the individual most resembles, the total sum 
of divergences is enormously reduced below what it would be 
if they had been measured all from some one nature. By the 
theory of a single type, this reduction in the sum of divergences 
due to measuring each individual's divergence from any one 
of K natures, is much less. 

These two doctrines can be made clear by graphic illustra- 
tions. Let the amount of each trait in the combination be 
scaled, as by our custom, horizontally, the center always repre- 
senting the mode. Let the nature or make-up of each indi- 
vidual be represented by the points where a cross-line denoting 
him cuts the scale lines. The theory of multiple types then 
gives something like Fig. 84, and that of one type something 
like Fig. 85. All the cross-lines of Fig. 84 can be represented 
as minor divergences from five typical cross-lines, far better 
than can all the cross lines of Fig. 85. Those of Fig. 85 can 



DIFFERENCES IN COMBINATIONS OF TRAITS 



417 



be far better represented by one typical cross-line than can 
those of Fig. 84. 




Fig. 84. A Graphic Representation of the Multiple-type Theory in the case of 
Combinations of Traits. The n horizontal dotted lines (drawn only at the 
extremes) represent scales for n traits. Each cross-line represents, by its 
location, the amounts of the n traits in one individual. 




Fig. 85. A Graphic Representation of the Single-type Theory in the case of Com- 
binations of Traits. The n horizontal lines represent scales for n traits. 
Each cross-line represents the amounts of the n traits in one individual. 

It is not necessary to try to decide between these two 
theories, or to determine just what compromise is the true one. 
It is better to accept frankly our ignorance of just how indi- 



418 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

viduals do differ in combinations of traits until they have been 
measured in respect to all the traits involved. 

Since, however, many writers about human nature openly or 
tacitly assume the truth of the multiple type theory in a pro- 
nounced form, and are governed by it in their methods of 
research, of interpretation and of practical control, it will be 
useful to consider briefly some of the arguments in favor of 
the single type theory. 

The first is the fact that, in proportion as exact measure- 
ments have been applied, evidence expected to favor the mul- 
tiple type theory has turned out in favor of the single type 
theory. It is true that such cases are very rare, and that, until 
they are much increased in number, little should be inferred 
from them. But the fact remains that the single type theory 
arose from exact measurements, while its opposite came from 
speculative prepossessions. 

The second is the rarity of the inverse correlations between 
desirable traits upon which so many of the supposed multiple 
types are based. We know that eye-minded and ear-minded, 
quick and careful, broad and deep, sensorial and intellectual, 
men of thought and men of action, and the like do not really 
represent human nature's varieties in the combinations referred 
to. If two horizontal scales are drawn for 'ability to learn 
through the eye' and 'ability to learn through the ear,' and the 
crosslines are drawn for a thousand individuals, they will not 
go as in Fig. 86 but as in Fig. 87. So also for scales for 
quantity of work and quality of work, and so on through the 
list. 

The third is the fact that investigators who are strongly 
in favor of the multiple type theory and accustomed to interpret 
facts in harmony with it, yet find so few actual cases of it. 
Meumann, for instance, ['07, vol. I] clearly accepts the theory 



DIFFERENCES IN COMBINATIONS 'OF TRAITS 4-ig 

in general and demands that educational practice should give 
much attention to the classification of pupils under distinct 
types. But in concrete particulars he rarely illustrates it. 



Fig. 86. A graphic representation of the condition of individuals in a combination 
of two traits, if these are very antagonistic or inversely correlated. The general 
scheme of the diagram is that used in Figs. 82 to 85. 

He says ['07, vol. I, pp. 331-332] : "By establishing types 
we orient ourselves in the endless possibilities of individual 
differences, and if we can place an individual under a type 
.... in any respect we thereby have pointed out a group of 
universal characters in his mental life, which he in general 
shares with some individuals and by which he is in general 




Fig. 87. A graphic representation of the condition of individuals in a combination 
of two traits, if these are closely and positively related. 

distinguished from others." But he does not establish such 
types. The majority of the differences which he does report as 
'typical' are differences between two extremes of the same trait. 
Intermediate conditions are in some of these cases demonstrably, 
and in all cases probably, more typical than the supposed types. 
And this, indeed, Meumann, in some cases, admits. 

Lastly, I may mention the fact that satisfactory proof of 
the existence of a distribution of human individuals after the 



420 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

fashion demanded by the multiple type theory has never been 
given in a single case, and that the evidence offered by even 
the most scientific of the theory's adherents is such as they 
would certainly themselves consider very weak if they were 
not already certain that types of some sort there must be. 
Thus a fair-minded perusal of Stern's Psychologie der Indivi- 
duellen Differenzen, designed to be a description of the types 
into which human nature falls, is an almost sure means of 
stimulating a shrewd student to the suspicion that intermediate 
conditions are more frequent than the supposed types, and that 
there are far more simply ordinary people than there are of all 
the 'types' put together. 

Thus Stern says, "We know the enormous gap which 
exists between the unmusical and the musician in the discrim- 
ination of pitch, between the perfumer and the ordinary person 
in the recognition of odors, between the painter and the book- 
worm in the delicacy of color perception." On the contrary, 
between the keenest of the non-musical and the dullest of 
musicians in the discrimination of pitch there is no enormous 
gap, but an enormous overlapping (see Spearman, '04 b, pp. 90 
and 92). Stern himself later points out that a little special 
practice bridges the 'enormous gap.' 

Stern mentions (p. 46) "the types of the external observer 
(the experimental scientist, possibly) and of the introspective 
thinker (the mathematician or metaphysician, possibly)." But 
these are not distinct, contrasting types. The experimental 
scientist is far more likely to be a good mathematician than is 
the ordinary man. Mathematical ability and interest are in no 
sense confined to the metaphysicians. The good external ob- 
server may be excellent at introspection, and the man with a 
strong interest in his inner life of thought is much more likely 
than the average man to have a strong interest in external facts. 



DIFFERENCES IN COMBINATIONS OF TRAITS 4 21 

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN THE AVERAGE AMOUNT OF A 
COMBINATION OF TRAITS 

There are many combinations of traits which can be reduced 
to single traits by abstraction from some of their particulars. 
Suppose, for example, that A and B are measured in respect to 
efficiency in marking A's, in marking words containing each 
the two letters a and t, in marking hexagons on a sheet of 
various simple geometrical forms, in marking grays of a cer- 
tain intensity on a sheet with 200 squares of grays of five inten- 
sities, and in marking misspelled words on a sheet containing 
a passage with 100 out of 500 words misspelled. Suppose the 
results to be: 





A 


B 


Marking A's 


— 1.1 


+ 1.0 


a — t words 


—1.4 


+07 


hexagons 


—.6 


+ 1.2 


grays 


.0 


— .2 


misspelled words 


—1-7 


+ 1.4 



B — A equals 2.1, 2.1, 1.8, — .2 and 3.1 respectively. 

If we abstract from the particular differences and ask only 
concerning the condition of A and B, and their difference, in 
average efficiency in marking these five sorts of visual objects, 
the result is that A= — .96 ( — 4.8 divided by 5), B=+.82 
( +4. 1 divided by 5 ) , and B — A = 1 .78. 

Such abstraction from certain particulars of each of a com- 
bination of traits can be, and is, in both ordinary and scientific 
thinking, carried so far as to unite in a single trait very diverse 
features of intellect and character. From the combination of 
all the accuracies of discrimination with this and that length, 
color, weight and the like, may be got the one trait, accuracy 



422 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 

in sensory discrimination. From the quickness of formation 
of each of a thousand habits, is derived the single trait, rate of 
learning. Accuracy, quickness, efficiency, permanence, amount 
of improvement, rate of improvement, and acceleration or 
retardation in the rate of improvement, are important cases of 
the measurement on one scale of some feature of an individual's 
condition in a group of traits. Originality, courage, timidity, 
suggestibility, scholarship, judgment, interest and curiosity 
are samples from a long list that could be made of terms, each 
used with comparatives to denote, though very crudely, a man's 
position on a single scale. This position or amount would, 
however, be the resultant of many manifestations of what would 
have to be scored as a combination of many traits, if represented 
in full, concrete detail. 

For all such one-scale representations of combinations of 
traits, the entire theory of single traits given in Chapter XXVI 
holds good. In particular, the single type theory holds of them 
with fewer exceptions. For some one large cause will much 
less often act upon a man with the same effect in all the 
traits of a combination than in some one of them. So, whereas, 
in discrimination of the tastes of wines or teas or the like, men 
may be divided into an ordinary and an expert class, they will 
not be, in respect to accuracy of sensory discrimination in gen- 
eral. Similarly, though, in knowledge of the Latin language, 
men may fall into two groups, — an ignorant group and a group 
varying around some knowledge, — in knowledge of languages 
in general, they do not 



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Schneider, G. H '8o Der Thierische Wille. 

Schneider, G. H .'82 Der Menschliche Wille. 

Schuyler, W., and 

Swift, E. J '07 The Learning Process. Psychological Bulletin, 

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429 



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Swift, E. J., and 

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Swift, E. J '03 Studies in the Psychology and Physiology of 

Learning. A. J. P., vol. 14, pp. 201-251. 

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vol. 16, pp. 131-133. 

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43° 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Thorndike, E. L '07 



u it 



Trettien, A. W 

Van Gehuchten, A 

Wells, F. L 

Weygandt, W 



10 



00 



00 



97 



Whitley, M. T '11 

Wiersma, H. 

Wimms, J. H '07 



Woods, F. A '06 

Woodworth, R. 3 '03 

Woodworth, R. S., and 
Ladd, G. T '11 

Wright, W. R '06 

Yoakum, C. S '09 



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Anatomie du systeme nerveux de Vhomme. 

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The Relative Effect's of Fatigue and Practice 

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195. 

Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty. 

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Elements of Physiological Psychology. 

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INDEX 



132 



INDEX 



Abilities. See under separate head- 
ings 

Ability, functions of, 181 f . ; in- 
heritance of, 360 ff. 

Acceleration of improvement, 225 

Ach, N., 145 

Ac her, R. A., 19 

Achievement, relative versus abso- 
lute, 367 f. 

Acquired tendencies, 2 

Acquisition, 17 

Activities, sex differences in, 347 ff. 

Activity, general mental, 64 f. ; gen- 
eral physical, 66 

Addition, amount and rate of im- 
provement in, 190, 192 f. ; of bonds 
as a factor in improvement, 202 
ff. ; of satisfyingness and annoy- 
ingness, 202 ff. ; effect of differ- 
ent distributions of practice on, 
207 f. ; change of rate of im- 
provement in, 226; permanence of 
improvement in, 250 f. See also 
Computation 

Adjustment. See Set of the or- 
ganism 

Adornment, 63 

Affection, 27 ff. 

Age, changes in mental traits with, 
369 ff. 

Amberg, E., 295 

Amount and rate of improvement, 
186 ff. ; in typewriting 187, 189 ; 
in tossing balls, 188; in writing 
German script, 190; in substitu- 
tion tests, 191 ; in shorthand, 
191 ; in observing small visual de- 
tails, 192 ; in addition, 192 f. ; vari- 
ation of, with individuals, 196 f . ; 
of fatigue, 289 ff. 

Analogy, response by, 135 f. ; 148 f. 



Analysis, 135 f., 138, 147 ff., 153 ff. r 
159 

Anatomy of original tendencies, 
84 ff. 

Ancestry. See Inheritance 

Angell, F., 243 

Angell, J. R., 77, 276, 278 

Anger, 23 ff. 

Animal learning, 125 ff. 

Animals, responses to, 18, 22 

Annoyers, original, 50 ff. ; explicable 
only by cerebral physiology, 53 
ff. ; in relation to readiness and 
unreadiness, 53 ff. ; function of, 
in learning, 71 f. ; 125 ff. 

Annoyingness, addition and subtrac- 
tion of, 202 ff., 210 ff. 

Approval, responses to, 31, responses 
by, 32 f. 

Arai, T., 284 ff. 

Arithmetic, order of formation of 
bonds in, 222 f. ; permanence of 
improvement in, 250 f. ; individual 
differences in, 332 ff. See also Ad- 
dition, Computation, etc. 

Arithmetical inductions, 159 f. 

Arrangement of subject-matter, 219 
ff. 

Artistic instincts, 63 

ASCHAFFENBURG, G., 200 

Assertiveness, sex differences in, 

347 

Assimilation, 135 f., 148 ff. 

Association, sex differences in, 345 ; 
inheritance of speed and control 
in, 365. See also Bonds and Con- 
nections 

Associative learning, in man, 138 ff. ; 
shifting, 136, 151 f. 

Athleticism, sex differences in, 347 

Attack, 23, 33 f., 47 



INDEX 



433 



Attention, 14 f., 23 ff. ; to human 
beings, 30; to elements as an aid 
in analysis, 159 f . ; as a condition 
of improvement, 214 

Attention-getting, 30 f. 

Attitude, functions of, 181. See also 
Set of the organism 

Authority, misuse of, 39 

Babbitt, E. H., 271 

Babbling, 43, 59 

Bagley, W. C, 146, 174 

Barker, L. R, 86, 88, 89, 90 

Bean, C. H., 245, 247 

Behavior, defined, 2; of chicks, 125 
ff. ; of turtles, 128; of kittens, 129; 
of man in learning puzzles, 139 f. 

Betts, G. H., 262, 413 f. 

Binet, A., 292, 309 

Biting, 23 

Boas, R, 307 

Bodily control, 15 ff. ; 59 ff. 

Bolton, T. L., 299, 307 1, 313 

Bonds, between situation and re- 
sponse, 5 ff., 125 ff. ; arranged in 
series, 130 f. ; with elements of 
situations, 134 f., 153 ff., 260; in- 
volving ideas, 140 f. ; formation 
of, in man, 143 ff. ; manipulation 
of, in analysis, 161 ff. ; number of, 
in human learning, 173; the or- 
ganization of, 176 ff., 243, 254 f. ; 
order of formation of, 222 f. ; 
interdependence of, 236 f. ; addi- 
tion and subtraction of, as ele- 
ments in improvement, 202 ff. ; 
selection and arrangement of, 219 
ff. ; number, difficulty and order 
of formation of, in relation to the 
form of the practice curve; 229 
ff-: strengthening of, by inner 
4 



growth, 243 ; harmful, 245 ; weak- 
ening by disuse, 245 ff. ; differ- 
ences between, in respect to per- 
manence, 251 ff. ; facilitation and 
inhibition of, 259 ff. ; opposite, 
264 f. ; in relation to mental dis- 
cipline, 278 ff. 

Book, W. R, 189, 212, 213, 228, 
248 f., 253 

Bryan, W. L., 108 

Buhler, K., 145 

Bullying, 38 ff. 

Burk, C. R, 109 

Burk, F. L., 39, 104, 118 

Calkins, M. W., 77 f. 

Calm, in relation to improvement, 
214 ff. 

Capacities, defined 4 f . ; of sensitiv- 
ity, 11 ff. ; of bodily control, 15 
ff., 59 ff. ; productive of learning, 
69 ff. See also Original tenden- 
cies 

Catharsis, doctrine of, 119 f. 

Cephalic index, inheritance of, 358 

Chain-reactions, 55 f. 

Chamberlain, A. R, 30 

Changes, in the rate of improve- 
ment, 225 ff. ; in addition, 226, 228 ; 
in telegraphy, 227 ; in substitution 
tests, 227; in typewriting, 229; 
general features of, 229; causes 
of, 229 ff. ; in relation to the num- 
ber and difficulty of formation 
and order of formation of bonds, 
231 ff. ; in relation to the potency 
of bonds, 235; in relation to 
changes in the learner's power, 
235 f. ; in relation to the correla- 
tions of bonds, 236 f. ; in relation 
to re-learning and over- learning, 



434 



INDEX 



237 ff. ; in the rate of fatigue, 294 
ff. 

Character, sex differences in, 347 ff. 

Chicks, learning of, 125 ff. 

Clasping, 28 

Classification of individuals, 402- 
422, passim 

Cleveland, A. A., 213 

Climbing, 15 

Clinging, 15, 22, 28 

Clutching, 20, 22 

Collecting, 20 

Colvin, S. S., 174, 276 

Combat in rivalry, 25. See also 
Fighting 

Combinations, of original tenden- 
cies, 9; of traits, 411 ff. 

Comparison, as an aid to analysis, 
159 

Competing bonds, effect of, on 
permanence 257 f. 

Computation, efficiency of, under 
continuous exercise, 284 ff. ; early 
and late, in the school session, 308 
ff. ; individual differences in, 332 
ff. ; after equal increments of 
practice, 392 ff. 

Concomitants, varying, 159 ff. 

Conditions of improvement, 202 ff. 

Conduction, readiness for, 53 ff. ; 
physiology of, 98 

Congruity between an organism's 
set and its response, 130 

Connection-forming, 131, 138 ff. ; 
and analysis, 161 ff. ; and selec- 
tive thinking, 169 ff. ; complexity 
of results of, 175; essential in 
improvement, 202 f. ; systematiza- 
tion of, by education, 223 f. See 
also Bonds 

Connections. See Bonds 



Connectors, 84 

Conscientiousness, sex differences 

in, 347 
Consciousness, in angry behavior, 

25 f. 
Constructiveness, 62 f. 
Contempt, 31 

Continuity of variations, 402 ff. 
Control, mental, instinct of, 65. 
Convergence, of stimuli, 92 f. 
Cooley, C. H., 38, 42 
Cooing, 28 
Coover, J. E., 243 

CORNMAN, O. P., 360, 39O 

Correlations of bonds, 236 ff. See 
also Facilitation and Inhibition 

Counter-attack, 23 

Counting letters, efficiency in, under 
continuous exercise, 290 f. 

Courtis, S. A., 332 f., 390 

Courtship, 25 

Crouching, 20 f. 

Cruelty, 38 f. 

Crying, 20, 59 

Curiosity, 63 f. 

Curves, of practice, 186 ff., 226 ff. ; 
of work, 294 ff. ; of satisfying- 
ness, 301 ff. ; of frequency, 338 ff. 

Darkness and fear, 21 

Darwin, C, 31 

Deafness, inheritance of, 359 

Defects in original nature, 120 ff. 

Delayed original tendencies, 100 ff., 
107 ff. 

Deprivations due to mental work, 
321 f. 

Destructiveness, 62 f. 

Deterioration of functions by dis- 
use, 182, 243 ff. 



INDEX 



435 



Deviations. See Individual differ- 
ences 

Dewey, J., 146, 214, 275 

Dictation, 307 

Differences. See Individual differ- 
ences 

Difficulty of formation of bonds, 
232 ff. 

Discipline, mental, 267 ff. 

Discomfort. See Annoyers 

Discrimination, by varying concom- 
itants, 159 ff. 

Display, 33 

Dispositions. See Set of the organ- 
ism 

Distribution, of stimuli, 92 ff. ; of 
practice, 205 ff., 293 f. ; of amounts 
of mental traits, 337 ff., 402 ff. 

Distributions, of children in respect 
to ability in arithmetic and prog- 
ress through school, 337 ff. ; cor- 
responding to stated differences 
between groups, 343, 344? °f 
whites and negroes in scholar- 
ship, 352, 408; of boys and girls 
in various traits, 405 

Disuse, law of, 70; effects of, 243 ff. 

Division, improvement in, 193, 207, 

251 
Domestic service and gregarious- 

ness, 30 
Dwight, T., 272 

Earle, E. L., 359 
Eating, 19 

Ebbinghaus, H., 245 f., 252 
Ebert, E., 263 

Economics, sex differences in schol- 
arship in, 345 
Edinger, L., 88, 93 
Effect law of, 71, 125 ff., 165. 172 



Effectors, 84 

Efficiency, concept of, 182 ff. ; meas- 
urement of, 183 ff. ; means of in- 
creasing, 324 ff. See also Im- 
provement and Fatigue. 
Elements, of original tendencies, 9, 
68; responses to, 134 f., 147 ff., 
153 ff-, 159 ff- ; action of, in facili- 
tation and inhibition, 260 ff. ; 
spread of improvement by iden- 
tical, 268 f., 274 ff. 

Emotional excitement, in relation 
to improvement, 214 ff. 

Emotions, sex differences in, 247 ff. 

Emulation, 35 ff. 

End spurt, 296 f. 

English, sex differences in scholar- 
ship in, 345 

Environment, cooperation of, with 
original nature, 2, 397 ff. ; and sex 
differences, 340 f. ; and family 
resemblances, 358, 360, 361, 363, 
365 f. ; and maturity, 370 f. ; selec- 
tive action of, 377 f. ; and ability 
in spelling, 384 ff. ; and the choice 
of a profession, 389 f. ; method of 
action of the, 394 ff. ; as a cause 
of multimodality, 407 

Excess movements, 61 f. 

Excitement, and improvement, 214 ff. 

Exercise, law of, 70, 161 ff. 

Experimentation, instinct of, 65 

Eye-color, inheritance of, 358 

Eye-movements, 59 ff. 

Eye-strain, and mental work, 324 

Eyes, covering in fear, 20 

Facilitation, 259 ff. 

Faculties, alleged formation of con 

nections by, 72 f. 
Fallacy, of unfair selection, 377 f. 



43^ 



INDEX 



Fatigue, and improvement, 244; 
definitions of, 283 ; of a single 
function, 283 ff., 314 f . ; amount 
and rate of, 289 ff. ; measurement 
of, 290; changes in the rate of, 

294 ff. ; transfer of, 305 ff. ; theo- 
ries of, 314 ff. 

Fay, E. A., 359 

Fear, 20 ff. ; gradual rise of, no 
Fighting instincts, 23 ff. 
Fluctuations in improvement, 225 
ff. ; under continuous exercise, 

295 ff. 
Fondling, 28 

Forgetting, rate of, 245 ff. ; special 
protection against, 256 f. See 
also Permanence of improvement 

Fracker, G. C, 273 

Fragments of original tendencies, 

' action of, 9, 68 

France, C. J., 119 f. 

Frequency. See Distributions and 

Variability- 
Frequency of improvability, 193 ff. 

Friedrich, J., 308, 313 

Functions, mental, defined, 176 f. ; 
analysis of, 177 f. ; characteristics 
of, 178 ff. ; measurement of the 
efficiency of, 182 ff. ; improvement 
of, 186 ff. See also Efficiency, 
Improvement, and Mental Disci- 
pline 

Galton, F., 356, 360 f., 382 f. 
Genius, inheritance of, 360 f. 
German script, improvement in 

writing, 190 
Gilbert, J. A., 370, 375 
Grasping, 17, 59 
Gregariousness, 29 f. 
Gross, K., 65 



Groups, measurement of differences 

between, 343 ff. 
Growth. See Maturity. 
Guillet, C., 104 f., 117, 122 

Habit-formation, in animals, 125 ff. ; 
in man, 139 ff. 

Habits, susceptibility of, to environ- 
mental influence, 401 ; relation of, 
to multimodality, 407. See also 
Bonds 

Hahn, H. H., 193, 393 

Hair-color, inheritance of, 358 

Hall, G. S., 116, 117, 118, 119, 122 

Handwriting, sex differences in, 347 

Harmful bonds, formation of, 245, 
263 

Head, erection of, 33; lowering of, 
33 

Heart-beat, in fear, 20 

Heck, W. H, 277 f. 

Henri, V., 309 

Heredity. See Inheritance 

Heymans, G., 347 ff. 

Hiding, 22 

History, sex differences in scholar- 
ship in, 345 

Hitting, 23 ff. 

Hoarding, 20 

Hoch, A., 56 

Hooting, 33 

Hunting instincts, 18 f., 39, 47 

Hyde, W., 190 

Hygiene of mental work, 323 ff.. 

Ideals, in relation to mental dis- 
cipline, 276, 277 

Ideas, as terms in learning, 138 

Identification of bonds, and im- 
provement, 210 f. 

Ideo-motor action, 75 ff. 



INDEX 



437 



Imagery, 412. ff. 

Imitation, 40 ff. ; alleged formation 
of connections by, 73 ff. 

Immunization by early indulgence, 
119 f. 

Imperfection of instincts, 16 

Improvability, frequency of, 193 ff. 

Improvement, concept of, 182 ff. ; 
amount and rate of, 186 ff. ; fre- 
quency of, 193 ff. ; rapidity of, 
194 f. ; individual differences in 
196; limit of, 198 ff. ; elements 
in, 202 f. ; conditions of, 205 ff . ; 
interest in, 212 ff. ; changes in 
the rate of, 225 ff. ; permanence 
of, 243 ff. ; spread of, 259 ff. 

Individual differences, 331 ff. ; meas- 
urement of, 332 ff. ; sex as a 
cause of, 340 ff. ; remote ancestry 
as a cause of, 351 ff. ; immediate 
ancestry as a cause of, 354 ff. ; 
maturity as a cause of, 369 ff. ; en- 
vironment as a cause of, 376 ff. ; 
effect of equalizing practice upon, 
391 ff. ; in single traits, 402 ff. ; 
in combinations of traits, 411 ff. 

Infallibility, doctrine of nature's, 
116 ff. 

Infants, responses to, 27 ff. 

Influence of improvement in one 
function upon others, 259 ff. 

Information, sex differences in, 345 

Ingenuity, sex differences in, 345 

Inheritance, from remote ancestry, 
351 ff. ; from near ancestry, 354 
ff. ; of physical traits, 358; of 
ability to learn to spell, 359 f . ; 
of genius, 360 f . ; of intellect, 361 
ff. ; and education, 367 f. 

Inhibition, 259 f., 264 ff. 



Initial spurt, 295 f. 

Injury from mental work, 327 ff. 

Inoculation, preventive mental, 119! 

Instincts, defined, 4; imperfections 
of, 16; of food-getting, protection, 
flight and attack, 17 ff . ; social, 27 
ff. ; of being satisfied and annoyed, 
50 ff. ; of vocalization, visual ex- 
ploration and manipulation, 59 ff. ; 
of curiosity and mental control, 
63 ff. ; of play, 66 ff . ; productive 
of learning, 69 ff. ; anatomy and 
physiology of, 84 ff . ; order and 
dates of, 100 ff. ; value and use of, 
116 ff. ; sex differences in, 350 f. 
See also Original tendencies 

Intellect, sex differences in, 345 ff. ; 
racial differences in, 351 ff. ; in- 
heritance of, 361 ff. ; types of, 415 ff. 

Intellectual instincts, 59 ff. 

Interest, and improvement, 212 ff. ; 
and fatigue, 325 f. 

Interests, 50 ff., in ff., 347 ff. 

Interference, 264 ff. ; responses to, 23 

Intervals between practice-periods, 
205 ff. 

Inventories of original tendencies, 
11 ff. 

Inverse correlations, 413, 418 

James, W., 18, 29, 75, 76, 77, 78, 

80 f., in 1, 114, 171 
Jennings, H. S., 355 
Johnston, J. B., 92 
Jumping, 15 

Kicking, 23 f. 
Kidd, D., 29 
Kindliness, 38 



438 



INDEX 



KlRBY, T. J., 192 f., 196, I97, 207 f., 

250 f. 
KlRKPATRICK, E. A., 15, 63 

Kittens, learning of, 129 f. 
Kline, L. W., 119 f. 
Kolliker, A., 85, 86, 88, 89 
Kraepelin, E., 296, 299 

Ladd, G. T., 133 

Language, original foundations of, 60 

Languages, sex differences in schol- 
arship in, 345 

Laughter, 38, 47 

learning, original tendencies pro- 
ductive of, 69 ff. ; by imitation, 
73 ff. ; by ideo-motor action, 75 ff. ; 
physiology of, 98; of animals, 
125 ff. ; associative, 138 ff. ; analy- 
tic and selective, 153 ff. See also 
Improvement 

Leisure classes, and approval, 32 

Length of practice-periods, 205 ff. 

v. Lenhossek, M., 89, 99 

Leuba, J. H., 190 

Lightning, and fear, 20 f. 

Limit of improvement, 198 ff. 

Lindley, TJ. H-, 296, 299 

MacCracken, H. M., 272 

McDougall, W., 29 f., 45, 48, 75, 78 

McMurry, F. M., 146 

Magneff, N., 245, 248 

Manipulation, 59 ff. 

Marbe, K., 145 

Marking tests, efficiency of, under 
continuous exercise, 290 f. ; early 
and late, in the school session, 

Mastery, 33 ff- 
Maternal instinct, 27 ff. 



Mathematics, sex differences in 
scholarship in, 345 

Maturity as a cause of individual 
differences, 369 ff. ; and environ- 
mental influences, 370 f. 

Mayo, M. J., 351 f. 

Measurement, of the efficiency of 
mental functions, 183 ff. ; of indi- 
vidual differences, 332 ff. ; of 
group differences, 343 ff. ; of re- 
semblance, 357; of changes with 
age, 369 ff. 

Memorizing, sex differences in, 345 

Memory, 243 ff. ; distribution of 
ability in, 405. See also Perma- 
nence of improvement 

Mental discipline, 267 ff . ; general 
rationale of, 278 ffr 

Mental functions. 'See Functions 

Messer, A., 145 

Meumann, E., 263, 413, 418 f. 

Miesmer, K., 296, 299 

Mirror-drawing, 140 

Modifiability, of neurones, 98. See 
also Learning 

Moral traits, sex differences in, 347 
ff. -"-*" 

Morgan, C. L., 270 

Morris, J. H., 271 

Motherly behavior, 2J ff. 

Motives, original foundations of, 
50 ff. 

Motor ability, development of with 
age, 107 ff. ; sex differences in, 

345 
Movements, original control of, 

15 ff-, 59 ff- 
Multiple response, 6 ff., 56, 61, 132, 

143 f. 
Multiple-type theory, 404 ff., 415 ff. 



INDEX 



439 



Natural selection and the order of 
appearance of instincts, 105 ff. 

Nature's infallibility, doctrine of, 
116 ff. 

Negative acceleration in improve- 
ment, 225 

Neglect, transfer of, 279 

Negritos, ability of, 353 

Negroes, ability of, 351 f. 

Nestling, 22 

Neurones, action of, in satisfying- 
ness and annoyingness, 53 ff. ; 
structure of, 84 ff . ; arrangement 
of, 87 ff. ; sensitivity and conduc- 
tivity of, 97; action of, in learn- 
ing, 98 

Nonsense syllables, rate of forget- 
ting, 245 ff. 

Novel data, responses to, 168 ff. 

Nudging, 33 

Number of bonds, in relation to the 
form of practice curves, 231 

Nursing, 2."] ff. 

Obstacles, responses to, 23 

Oehrn, A., 290, 295, 299 

Opinions concerning mental disci- 
pline, 269 ff., 275 ff. 

Ordahl, G., 36 f. 

Order, of appearance of delayed 
tendencies, 100 ff. ; of disappear- 
ance of transitory tendencies, 100 
ff. ; of formation of bonds in 
learning, 219 ff., 232 ff. 

Organization of bonds, 176 ff., 243, 
254 ff. 

Original tendencies, defined, 2; 
names for, 4 f. ; components of, 
5 ff. ; action of, 9 ff. ; to sensitivity, 
11 ff. ; to attentiveness, 14 f . ; of 
gross bodily control, 15 ff. ; of 



focd-getting, 17 ff. ; to hunt, 18 f.; 
to collect and hoard, 20; to fear, 
21 ff. ; to fighting and anger, 23 
ff. ; to respond to the behavior of 
other human beings, 27 ff. ; to be 
satisfied and annoyed, 50 ff. ; to 
vocalization, visual exploration 
and manipulation, 59 ff. ; to 
curiosity and mental control, 63 
ff. ; to play, 66 ff. ; productive of 
learning, 69 ff . ; anatomy and 
physiology of, 84 ff . ; order and 
dates of, 100 ff. ; value and use 
of, 116 ff. ; defects in, 120 ff. 

Over-learning, 237 f., 252 

Ownership, 37 

Pain, irrational response to, 24; and 
annoyingness, 51 

Parabolic form of practice curves, 
225 

Partial activity, 134 f., 147 ff., 153 
ff., 261 

Payne, J., 270 

Pearson, K., 346 f., 358 

Perception, sex differences in, 345 ; 
inheritance of ability in, 365 ff. ; 
distribution of ability in, 405 

Period-length, 205 ff. 

Permanence of improvement, 243 
ff. ; in knowledge of nonsense 
series and poetry, 245 ff. ; in 
tossing balls, 248; in typewriting, 
249; in arithmetic, 250 f . ; and 
over-learning, 252 f . ; and the na- 
ture of the bonds concerned, 
254 f. ; and learning not to for- 
get, 256; and competing bonds, 

257 f. 
Physiology of original tendencies, 
84 ff. 



44Q 



INDEX 



Plateaus, and learning, 225 

Play, 66 ff. 

Pleasure, and satisfyingness, 51 ; at 
being a cause, 65 

Poetry, rate of forgetting of, 248 

Popularity, sex differences in, 347 

Positive acceleration of improve- 
ment, 225 

Possession, 17 f. 

Potency of bonds, 235 

Pouncing, 18 

Practice, distribution of, 205 ff. ; ef- 
fect of, on individual differences, 
391 ff. See also Improvement, 
Amount and rate of improvement, 
etc. 

Problem-attitude, 214 

Profession, choice of a, 389 f. 

Protrusion of lips and tongue, 48 

Psychological conditions of im- 
provement, 208 ff. 

Pugnacity. See Fighting 

Pulling, 23, 38, 59 

Purposive behavior, 171 

Pushing, 23, 59 

Puzzles, responses to, 139 f. 

Race, and individual differences, 
351 ; and multimodality, 408 

Radossawljewitsch, P. R., 245 {., 
247, 248, 252 

Random activity, 6 f., 59 ff. 

Rate, of improvement. See Amount 
and rate of fatigue, 294 ff. 

Reaching, 17 

Reaction-time, 345, 405 

Reaction, varied. See Multiple re- 
sponse 

Readiness, 53 ff., 244 f. 

Reading, 220 

Reasoning. See Selective thinking 



Recapitulation theory, 100 ff. 
Recreation, and gregariousness, 29 1 
Reflexes, 4 

Reinforcement, 259 ff. 
Rejall, A. R, 248 f. 
Relearning, 237 f., 245 ff. 
Rending, 47 

Resemblances, measurement of, 357 
Responses, 5 ff. ; multiple, 6 ff., 56, 

61, 132, 143 f. ; to elements, 134 

f., 147 ff., 159 ff. ; to novel data, 

162 ff., 168 ff. 
Rest, 315 

Restraint, escape from, 23 
Rice, J. M., 360, 3S2, 384 ff., 390 
Rivalry, 35 f. 
Rivers, W. H. R., 296, 299 
Roark, R. N., 270 
Rowe, S. H., 275 
Royal families, heredity in, 361 ff. 
Ruediger, W. C, 276 
Ruger, H. A., 139 f., 168, 209, 262, 

263 
Running, 15, 20 

Satisfiers, original, 50 ff. ; explana- 
tion of, 53 ff. ; function of in 
learning, 71, 203 ff . ; and mental 
work, 301 ff. 

Schneider, G. H., 18, 104, 117, 118 

Scholarship, sex differences in, 345; 
of whites and negroes, 351 f. 

School work, and gregariousness, 
30; and the approval-scorn series, 
32; improvement in, 192 f., 207 f. ; 
and fatigue, 307 ff. 

Schuyler, W., 248, 253 

Science, sex differences in scholar- 
ship in, 345 

Scorn, responses to, 31; responses 
by, 32 



INDEX 



441 



Scratching, 24, 59 

Screaming, 20 

Segal, J., 413 

Selection. See Natural selection, 

Analytic and Selective functions, 

and Selective 
Selective, thinking, 138, 157 ff., 168 

ff., 345; fallacies, 377 *• 
Self consciousness, sex differences 

in, 347 
Sensory capacities, 11 ff., 97; sex 

differences in, 345 
Set of the organism, 133 ff., 144 ff. 
Sex, and individual differences, 340 

ff. ; and multimodality, 407 f . 
Sex differences, 340; in abilities, 

345 ff. ; in character and interests, 

346 ff. 

Sexes, differences in the training 

of the, 340 f. 
Shifting, associative, 136, 151 f. 
Shinn, M. W., 65 
Shorthand, improvement in, 191 
Shouting, 47, 59 
Shoving, 33 
Shyness, 347 

SlKORSKI, J., 307, 309, 313 

Similarity, association by, 171 
Single-type theory, 410, 415 ff. 
Situations, 5 ff. ; activity of, 134, 281 f. 
Skill, original foundations of, 15 

ff., 59 ff- 
Smiling, 28, 31, 32, 38, 47 
Sneering, 33 
Social instincts, 27 ff. 
Sounds, imitation of, 43 f. 
Specialization, of bonds, in fear, 21 

f. ; in righting, 23 ff. ; of mental 

functions, 274 ff. 
Spelling, 345, 384 ff. 
Spencer, H., 61 



Spread of improvement. See Men- 
tal discipline 

Spurt, after fatigue and after dis- 
turbance, 297 f. See also Initial 
Spurt, End spurt, etc. 

Starch, D., 140, 191, 392 f. 

Staring, 32 

Starting, 20 

Stature, inheritance of, 358 

Stern, W., 420 

Stiffening, 23 

Strangeness, and fear, 20 

Submission, 2>2> ff- 

Substitution tests, 190, 191 

Subtraction of bonds, as a factor in 
improvement, 202 f. 

Sweating, 20 

Swift, E. J., 191, 212, 213, 248 f., 

253 

Sympathy, 38 
Synapses, 87 ff. 

Tapping, 108 f., 345 

Teasing, 38 ff. 

Telegraphy, improvement in, 227 

Temperament, sex differences in» 

347 

Tension, and improvement, 214 ff. 

Theories of work and fatigue, 314 ff. 

Thinking. See Analysis, Selection, 
Bonds, etc.4 

Thomas, C, 271 

Thorndike, E. :U 277, 313, 365 U 
390, 393 

Thunder, 20 

Thwarting of original tendencies, 25 

Tormenting, 38 ff. 

Transfer of Improvement. See 
Mental discipline 

Transitoriness of original tenden- 
cies, 100 ff., in ff. 



442 



INDEX 






Trettien, A. W., is 
Turtles, learning of, 127 ff. 
Twins, resemblances of, 365 f. ; and 

the action of the environment, 

367 I 
Types of intellect and character, 406 

ff., 411 ff. 
Type-setters, improvement of, 200 f. 
Typewriting, improvement in, 187, 

189, 228, 249 f., 252 

Unreadiness of conduction units, 54 
ff. 

Use, law of, 70 f., 116 ff. 

Utility theory of the order of orig- 
inal tendencies, 105 ff. 

Value of original tendencies, 116 ff. 
Van Gehuchten, 85, 89, 90, 91, 93, 

94, 99 

Variability, 332 ff. ; methods of 
measuring, 337 ff., of individuals 
of the same sex and ancestry, 
354 ff. ; of germs from the same 
parents, 356 f . ; of the same 
groups in different traits, 404 ff. 
See also Individual differences 
and Distributions 

Varied reaction. See Multiple re- 
sponse 

Veblen, T., 32 

Visual exploration, 59 ff. 



Vivacity, sex differences in, 347 
Vocalization, 59 ff. 
Voluntary thinking, 171 t. 

Walking, 15 

Wants, original foundations of, 50 
ff. 

Warming up, 298 f., 302 

Washburn, M. R, 77 

Watt, H. J., 145 

Wells, F. L., 228, 393 

Weygandt, W., 296, 299 

Whites and negroes compared in 
scholarship, 351 f. 

Whitley*, M. T., 192, 392 

Wiersma, H., 347 ff. 

Wilson, W., 272 

Wimms, J. H., 299 

Woods, F. A., 361 ff. 

Woodworth, R. S., is, 133, 273 

Work, mental, curve of, 294 ff. ; 
definitions, 314 f. ; mechanical and 
biological theories of, 317 ff. ; pre- 
vention of injury from, 327 ff. 
See also Fatigue 

Worry and improvement, 214 ff. 

Writhing, 23 

Writing, German script, 100; from 
dictation, 307, 308 f. 

Yerkes, R. M., 128 
Yoakum, C. S., 296 



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